Takimono no kuyuru kokoro wa arishikado hitori wa taete nerarezarikeri

English Translation

There was in me a
smouldering, like incense, and
a regret with it
and yet, alone, I could not
sleep at all, could not sleep

Meaning

There was a smouldering in me, like incense, and a regret with it. And alone, I could not sleep at all.

Commentary

135 A Smouldering Heart

When the daughter of the Minister of the Right of Sanjō first began meeting the Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi, he held a post in the Storehouse Bureau and was in attendance at the palace. She, it seems, could not bring herself to wish for another meeting, and showed no sign of caring for him. He too, being in service, could not always be with her; and yet it was she who sent him this poem. Kanesuke was a skilful poet and no doubt answered it well, the prose concludes, but that poem is not known and is not set down here.
The Minister of the Right of Sanjō is Fujiwara no Sadakata, who appears in the twenty-ninth, seventy-first and ninety-first sections; the poet is his daughter. The Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi is Fujiwara no Kanesuke, who appears in the thirty-fifth, thirty-sixth, forty-fifth and seventy-first through seventy-fifth sections, and is counted among the thirty-six poetic immortals. The post he held was second officer of the Storehouse Bureau.
The setting is the beginning of their meetings, when his duties kept him away and she showed no sign of caring.
The prose records nothing of what prompted the poem, saying only that she sent it.
His reply is not known, the prose says, and the section closes on that. Her poem was later included in the Shinshūi-shū.

The incense of the first line is the blended kind burnt in a censer, and it introduces the verb that follows.
That verb means both smouldering, of incense, and regretting, so that a thin thread of smoke and a lingering regret are one word.
The concessive turns on it: there was that, and yet. The prose has told us she showed no sign of caring, and this smouldering is the answer to it.
The closing says that alone she could not sleep at all; the adverb pairs with the negative to mean not in the least, and the verb is in the potential. Incense was burnt where one slept, so that scent and sleeping belong to the same room. A woman who looked cold admits that she cannot sleep alone.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other