Fureba koso koe mo kumoi ni kikoekeme itodo harukeki kokochi nomi shite

English Translation

It is because I
have gone on weeping that my
voice reached the cloud-country
at all — and still there is on-
ly this sense of growing distance

Meaning

It is because I have gone on weeping that my voice reached the cloud-country at all — and still there is only this sense of a distance growing.

Commentary

106 The Reed Leaves

The late Prince of the Ministry of Military Affairs had courted this daughter of Taira no Nakaki before the affair recorded earlier, and composed "Ogi no ha no soyogu goto ni zo uramitsuru kaze ni utsurite tsuraki kokoro o". The same prince also composed "Asaku koso hito wa miruarame Sekikawa no tayuru kokoro wa araji to zo omou", and her reply was "Sekikawa no iwama o kuguru mizu asami taenubeku nomi miyuru kokoro o". Since for all his suit she would not see him, he came again on a bright moonlit night and composed "Yonayona ni izu to mishikado hakanakute irinishi tsuki to iite yaminamu". Then one time he dropped a fan, and picking it up she saw written on it, in a hand she did not know, "Wasuraruru mi wa warekara no ayamachi ni nashite dani koso kimi o uramine"; so she wrote beside it "Yuyushiku mo omooyuru kana hitogoto ni utomarenikeru yo ni koso arikere" and sent it to him. On another occasion she composed "Wasuraruru Tokiwa no yama no ne o zo naku akino no mushi no koe ni midarete", and his reply was "Naku naredo obotsukanaku zo omooyuru koe kiku koto no ima wa nakereba". And when the same prince composed "Kumoi nite yo o furu koro wa samidare no ame no shita ni zo ikeru kai naki", her answer was "Fureba koso koe mo kumoi ni kikoekeme itodo harukeki kokochi nomi shite". That is the whole of the section.
The Prince of the Ministry of Military Affairs headed that ministry. Taira no Nakaki served as Assistant Governor of Ōmi; the hundred and fifth section tells of his daughter and the priest Jōzō, and the fifty-seventh of her fallen circumstances. The events of this section fall before those of the hundred and fifth.
The setting is the moment his poem reached her.
What prompted it is his, "Kumoi nite yo o furu koro wa samidare no ame no shita ni zo ikeru kai naki", with its complaint that there is no good in living.
This reply closes the hundred and sixth section. Holding ten poems, the section begins in courtship, runs through an exchange in which they never meet, and ends on this statement of distance.

She takes over his verb exactly: passing time, falling rain, and here also the falling of tears — that is, weeping without cease. An emphatic construction governs the verb that follows.
Her voice reached the cloud-country, she says, taking up his own word for where he is. It reached him because she never stopped weeping.
What follows is a distance ever greater: the voice arrives, and the gap only widens.
The closing breaks off without a verb. That he is in the cloud-country is a fact about the palace and also a way of saying he is beyond reach. Taking the other's puns over whole is the pattern throughout, and ten poems of exchange end on this declaration of distance.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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