Au koto no negau bakari ni narinureba tada ni kaeshishi toki zo koishiki

English Translation

Now that meeting you
has come to be a thing I
only pray for, I
find myself longing for those
days when I sent you home un-

Meaning

Now that meeting you has come to be something I can only pray for, I find myself longing for the days when I sent you home with nothing.

Commentary

107 Reduced to Praying

Another woman sent this poem to the same Prince of the Ministry of Military Affairs. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
The prince headed that ministry and exchanges ten poems with Taira no Nakaki's daughter in the hundred and sixth section. Of this woman the prose says only that she was another.
Neither time nor place is given. All we are told is that another woman sent him a poem.
The prose records nothing of what prompted it.
The section ends with the poem; no reply and no later event is recorded. After the long exchange with one woman in the hundred and sixth section, this places a single poem from another.

The opening says that meeting him has become a thing she can only pray for, the particle of limitation marking that nothing else is left her.
The grammar makes that the reason for what follows: the present state is set down first, and from it she looks back.
What she looks back to is the time when she sent him away with nothing — her own former refusals.
The closing, with an emphatic particle governing its adjective, states the longing. Once she could turn him away; now she can only pray. She does not reproach him; she states how her own position has changed.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other