さわぐなるうちにも物は思ふなり
我がつれづれをなににたとへむ
我がつれづれをなににたとへむ
- Roma-ji
-
Sawagu naru uchi ni mo mono wa omou nari waga tsurezure o nani ni tatoemu
- English Translation
-
Even in all that
bustle, it seems, one still finds
time to brood — then what
am I to compare this emp-
ty leisure of my own to
- Meaning
- Even in all that bustle, it seems, one still finds time to brood. Then what am I to compare this empty leisure of mine to?
- Commentary
-
136 In All That Bustle
Following on from the previous section, the man sent word that he was too busy to come, and that even in the midst of all his running about he was endlessly anxious lest she should wonder why he did not; and she composed this poem. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
The poet is the same daughter of the Minister of the Right of Sanjō as in the hundred and thirty-fifth section, and the man is the Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi, Fujiwara no Kanesuke.
The setting is the period when his duties kept him from coming.
What prompted the poem was his message that he was anxious even while busy. It is her reply.
The section ends with the poem; no response and no later event is recorded. With the previous section it makes two consecutive sections about the same two people.
The opening takes his own account of his bustle, its grammar marking it as something reported rather than seen.
What follows accepts it: so one broods even then, it seems.
The word in the fourth line means having nothing to do, time hanging idle. His busyness and her emptiness are set as a pair.
The closing asks what she is to compare it to. If a busy man broods, then the brooding of an idle woman is past comparison. She takes his statement as it stands and turns his own reasoning on herself.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- It must be because I go on never having enough of you — for on nights we meet and nights we do not, you are dear to me
- 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
- Waiting for you who come only as the hunt comes only for a while the hill of Shiga cries out and autumn there is sorrow
- Like the grass that grows at the bottom of a pond no one can see, hid away — a love that no one knows of is a hard thing, then