Ki no kuni no Muro no kōri ni yukinagara kimi to fusuma no naki zo wabishiki

English Translation

Down to the district
of Muro in the land of Ki
I go — and even
so, to have no quilt to share
with you is a bleak business

Meaning

Down to the district of Muro in Kii I go — and even so, having no quilt to share with you is a bleak business.

Commentary

88 The District of Muro

The same man, going down to Kii, sent for clothing, saying that he was cold; and the woman composed "Ki no kuni no Muro no kōri ni yuku hito wa kaze no samusa mo omoishirareji". His reply was "Ki no kuni no Muro no kōri ni yukinagara kimi to fusuma no naki zo wabishiki". That is the whole of the section.
The man is the one of the eighty-seventh section, who left the woman in Tajima and went up to the capital, exchanging poems about the snow. Kii is what is now Wakayama prefecture, and Muro was a district within it.
The setting is the same journey down to Kii.
What prompted the poem is hers, "Ki no kuni no Muro no kōri ni yuku hito wa kaze no samusa mo omoishirareji", with its suggestion that he cannot be cold.
This reply closes the eighty-eighth section. The prose passes no judgement; the section consists of the exchange alone.

The opening takes her poem over whole, starting from the same place name — a properly matched reply.
The concessive in the third line grants her point about the warmth and turns on it: even so.
The word in the fourth line is a quilt, bedding. He moves the source of the cold from the climate to the absence of anyone to share a bed with.
The closing, with an emphatic particle governing its adjective, answers that he sent for clothes not because of the weather but because she is not there. He lets her gibe pass and converts it into a declaration of love.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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