Kokoro o shi kimi ni todomete kinishikaba mono omou koto wa ware ni ya aruramu

English Translation

Since I left my heart
behind me with you, and came
away without it
the one who does the brooding
can it after all be me

Meaning

Since I left my heart behind with you and came away without it, can the one doing the brooding really be me?

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 his going home after a night together.
What prompted the poem was that departure. It is a poem sent after a night.
She answered with a poem of her own, and that reply closes the eighty-ninth section.

An emphatic particle in the first line puts the weight on the heart.
Leaving it with her and coming away rests on the belief that the soul could leave the body — the same conception as the poem in the sixth section about sending one's soul along with another.
The closing asks whether the one who broods can be himself: if his heart is over there, then whoever is brooding cannot be him.
Having said in the earlier poem that he would brood after going home, and having been doubted for it, he now asks whose brooding it is. The poem is built as an argument, and the reply will answer it with another.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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