Yukusue no sukuse mo shirazu waga mukashi chigirishi koto wa omooyu ya kimi

English Translation

Not knowing at all
what fate the years would bring you
I made you promises
once, long ago — do they come
back to you at all, I wonder

Meaning

Not knowing what the years would bring you, I made you promises once, long ago. Do they come back to you at all?

Commentary

124 The Sanekazura Vine

While the Lady of the North at Hon'in was still the wife of the Major Counsellor and Governor-General, Heichū, that is Taira no Sadafun, sent her "Haru no no ni midori ni haeru sanekazura waga kimizane to tanomu ikani zo". Poems having passed between them in this way, they spent a night together. Afterwards, when she had become the wife of Fujiwara no Tokihira and was much talked of in the world, Sadafun sent her "Yukusue no sukuse mo shirazu waga mukashi chigirishi koto wa omooyu ya kimi". There were replies to these, and many other poems before and after, but they are not now known. That is the whole of the section.
The Lady of the North at Hon'in was the wife of Fujiwara no Tokihira, and appears in the fourteenth section, where her younger sister Ōtsufune is spoken of. The Major Counsellor and Governor-General held the Dazaifu post together with his rank at court. Heichū is Taira no Sadafun, known as a great lover, who appears in the forty-sixth, sixty-fourth and hundred and third sections.
The setting is the period after she had become Tokihira's wife and was much talked of. A considerable time has passed since the earlier poem.
The prose records nothing of what prompted it, saying only that Sadafun sent it again.
The section closes with this poem. There were replies and many other poems, the prose says, but they are not now known — judging poems by whether anyone bothered to remember them.

The opening means not knowing what fate lay ahead; the word belongs to Buddhist teaching about bonds carried from former lives, and appears in the priest Jōzō's poem in the sixty-second section as well.
Not knowing what was to come leads into the promises he made then: he had no idea she would rise so far.
What he made were promises — the night they spent and the words exchanged in it.
The closing asks whether they come back to her, and ends by addressing her directly. Now that she is far above him he asks only whether she remembers, without reproach and without any request. No reply to this poem has come down.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other