Nugu o nomi kanashi to omoishi naki hito no katami no iro wa mata mo arikeri

English Translation

I had thought the one
sorrow was the taking off
of mourning — and yet
here is another colour
that keeps her memory too

Meaning

I had thought the one sorrow was taking off my mourning; and here is another colour that keeps her memory too.

Commentary

98 The Colour That Remains

When Sugawara no Kimi, the mother of Fujiwara no Saneyori, Minister of the Left, had died, and the mourning was over, the retired emperor in holy orders interceded with the emperor and the Chancellor was permitted to wear a colour above his rank. So Tadahira put on a fine layered robe of sappanwood red and went to the empress, saying that by the retired emperor's kindness he had been allowed this colour, and composed this poem. And he wept, we are told.
Fujiwara no Tadahira rose to Chancellor and appears in the ninety-seventh section. Sugawara no Kimi was his wife and Saneyori's mother, a different woman from the lady of the ninety-seventh section. The layered sappanwood robe was a garment whose wearing was governed by rank.
The setting is the palace after the mourning had ended, with Tadahira come in the robe he had been permitted.
What prompted the poem was that permission: having put off mourning, he was to put on a new colour.
He wept, the prose says. The section closes on that sentence.

The opening says he had thought the one sorrow was taking off his mourning: to put off the black was to be carried further from the dead.
What follows names a colour that keeps her memory; the word covers a keepsake left by the dead and anything that recalls them.
The closing marks the discovery that there is another such thing after all: the mourning is off, and here is a colour that does the same work.
The sappanwood robe was permitted him on account of his wife's own standing, so that wearing it becomes a new keepsake. A permission to be glad of turns into an occasion for grief, and his weeping shows that the turn took him by surprise.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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