Yamazato ni ware o todomete wakareji no yuki no manimani fukaku naruramu

English Translation

You have left me here
in this hill village, and now
along the parting
road, as you go, as the snow
goes, it must be deepening

Meaning

You have left me here in the hill village, and along the road that parted us, as you go and as the snow falls, it must be deepening.

Commentary

87 As the Snow Falls

A man who had held a post in the Arsenal and had gone out to Tajima left the woman he had taken as his wife there and went up to the capital; and when the snow came she sent him "Yamazato ni ware o todomete wakareji no yuki no manimani fukaku naruramu". His reply was "Yamazato ni kayou kokoro mo taenubeshi yuku mo tomaru mo kokorobososa ni". That is the whole of the section.
The post was a third-rank one in the Arsenal, the office responsible for weapons. Tajima lies in the north of what is now Hyōgo prefecture. The same man appears in the eighty-eighth section. Of the woman the prose says only that he had taken her as his wife there.
The setting is the hill village in Tajima, in the snowy season after he had gone up to the capital.
What prompted the poem was the coming of the snow. It was sent to him in the capital.
He answered with a poem of his own, and the exchange closes the section. The eighty-eighth gives another exchange between the same two.

The opening is spoken from where she is: left behind in a village among the hills.
The road of the second line is the road along which they parted, the distance between them.
The word for snow in the third line is also the word for going, so that the snow's falling and his going are the same phrase. The same pun is used in the seventy-fifth section.
The closing supposes it deepening — the snow, and the distance with it. Once the road is buried, no one can pass along it.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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