Wasureji to tanomeshi hito wa ari to kiku iishi koto no ha izuchi inikemu

English Translation

The one who told me
he would not forget, and made
me hope — he is well
I hear. Then those words he spoke
where in the world have they gone

Meaning

The one who told me he would not forget, and made me hope — he is well, I hear. Then where have the words he spoke gone?

Commentary

81 The One Who Gave Me Hope

While Ukon, daughter of the Lesser Captain Suenawa, was serving the late princess, the Provisional Middle Counsellor used to visit her. They had exchanged promises; but when Ukon ceased to attend at the palace and returned to her family home, he stopped coming. When someone from the palace called, she asked whether he was attending court, and was told that he was there constantly; and when she wrote to him she sent this poem. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
Ukon was a daughter of the Lesser Captain Suenawa and is known as a poet. She appears in five consecutive sections, the eighty-first through eighty-fifth; the poem of the eighty-fourth was taken into the Shūi-shū and into the Hundred Poems by a Hundred Poets. The Provisional Middle Counsellor held that office. Of the princess she served, the prose says only that she is now dead.
The setting is the period of Ukon's stay at home, his visits having stopped when she left the palace.
What prompted the poem was hearing from a visitor that he was at court constantly. It went with her letter.
The section ends with the poem; no reply and no later event is recorded. It was later included in the Gosen-shū.

The first line names him by what he said: the man who promised not to forget and so gave her something to count on.
The second reports what she has heard — that he is alive and well. Man present, words absent: that contrast is the whole frame.
What she calls his words uses the old figure of speech as leaves, which leads into the question that follows.
The closing asks, in the past tense, where they have gone. She has learned where he is and not where his words are. Instead of accusing him, she goes looking for something he said.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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