Ikani shite ware wa kienamu shiratsuyu no kaerite nochi no mono wa omowaji

English Translation

How am I to melt
away like the white dew — go
out altogether
so that after going home
I need not think of you so

Meaning

How am I to melt away like the white dew, and be gone altogether, so that after going home I need not think of you so?

Commentary

89 The Icefish at the Weir

While a man who held the post of Master of the Right Horse Bureau was visiting a woman known as the Lady of Shuri, he sent word that the direction was closed to him and he could not come, and she composed "Kore naranu koto o mo ōku tagaureba uramimu kata mo naki zo wabishiki". Later, when he had stopped coming altogether, she composed "Ikade nao ajiro no hio ni koto towamu nani ni yorite ka ware o towanu to", and his reply was "Ajiro yori hoka ni wa hio no yoru mono ka shirazu wa Uji no hito ni toe kashi". From the days when he was still visiting there is a poem she made at an early morning parting, "Akenu tote isogi mo zo suru Ōsaka no kiri tachinu tomo hito ni kikasu na", and one he made when he first began coming, "Ikani shite ware wa kienamu shiratsuyu no kaerite nochi no mono wa omowaji"; her reply to it was "Kakiho naru kimi ga asagao mite shi kana kaerite nochi wa mono ya omou to". After a night together, on going home, he composed "Kokoro o shi kimi ni todomete kinishikaba mono omou koto wa ware ni ya aruramu", and the Lady of Shuri answered with "Tamashii wa okashiki koto mo nakarikeri yorozu no mono wa kara ni zo arikeru". That is the whole of the section.
The Lady of Shuri takes her name from that office. The Master of the Right Horse Bureau headed the office responsible for horses. This section holds eight poems and is not arranged in order of time: the poems from after his visits ceased come first, and the section then turns back to the days when he was still coming.
The setting is the period when he first began visiting.
The prose records nothing further of what prompted it. All we are told is that it belongs to the beginning of his visits.
She answered with a poem of her own, and the section goes on to two further exchanges.

The opening wishes that he might vanish, in the grammar of a wish for oneself.
The white dew leads into the word that follows: dew settles and is gone, and there was an old expression for its melting clean away.
The word in the fourth line carries both the dew's vanishing and his own going home, so that dew disappearing and a lover leaving are held in one word.
The closing says he would not have to brood. The only way to escape the longing that comes after leaving is to be gone altogether. The brooding that follows a night together is put into the way dew goes.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other