Morotomo ni Ide no sato koso koishikere hitori ori uki yamabuki no hana

English Translation

The village of Ide
where we two were together
is what I long for
Bitter to break them alone
these yellow roses of mine

Meaning

The village of Ide, where the two of us were together, is what I long for. It is bitter to break them alone — these yellow roses.

Commentary

113 The Village of Ide

After Morotada of the Palace Guards had drifted apart from the third daughter of Tachibana no Kinhira, he was chosen as a dancer for the festival and went out to it, and she and her sisters were there watching. When he had come home she sent him "Mukashi kite nareshi o sureru koromode o ana mezurashi to yoso ni mishi kana", and he sent back "Morotomo ni Ide no sato koso koishikere hitori ori uki yamabuki no hana", tied to a spray of yellow roses. Her answer to it is not known; but from the days when he was still visiting there is "Ōzora mo tada naranu kana kannazuki ware nomi shita ni shigure to omoeba", and another of hers, "Au koto no nami no shitagusa mikakurete shizugokoro naku ne koso nakarure". That is the whole of the section.
Tachibana no Kinhira headed the Palace Table Office, and his daughters lived at the place called Agata no Ido. The eldest served the empress under the name of the Lady Shōshō. The third was the first love of Minamoto no Saneakira in his youth, and her poems appear in the hundred and eleventh through hundred and thirteenth sections and in the hundred and sixteenth. Morotada held a third-rank post in the Palace Guards and appears in the hundred and twelfth section.
The setting is after her poem reached him. The yellow roses tell us it is spring.
What prompted it is hers, "Mukashi kite nareshi o sureru koromode o ana mezurashi to yoso ni mishi kana". His poem went tied to a spray of the roses.
Her answer to it is not known, the prose says. From here the section turns back to poems from the days when he was still visiting.

The first word means together, the two of them.
Ide, in Yamashiro, was long celebrated in poetry for its yellow roses and its frogs, and appears in the fifty-eighth section as well. Its name carries the sound of the word for being somewhere, so that being there together is folded into the place name.
The word in the fourth line means both breaking off a flower and being by oneself, so that breaking them alone and being alone are one word.
The poem ends on the flowers themselves, named and left standing. Gift and verse work as one thing, as with the willow branch in the third section and the pampas grass in the seventeenth. Her poem was about a robe; his comes with a flower, and the exchange continues through objects.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other