Arihatenu inochi matsu ma no hodo bakari uki koto shigeku nagekazu mogana

English Translation

For the little while
I wait out this life that will
not last to the end
I would not have grief so thick
upon me, nor so much sighing

Meaning

For the little while I wait out this life, which will not last to the end, I would not have grief so thick upon me, nor so much sighing.

Commentary

142 While I Wait Out This Life

The eldest daughter of the late Lady of the Bedchamber was a woman of unusual feeling, and composed better than her brothers and sisters. Her mother died when she was young and she was brought up by a stepmother, so that things did not go as she would have wished, and she composed "Arihatenu inochi matsu ma no hodo bakari uki koto shigeku nagekazu mogana". Breaking off a spray of plum, she also composed "Kakaru ka no aki mo kawarazu nioi seba haru koishi chō nagame semashi ya". She was so accomplished and so interesting a woman that many men courted her, but she would not even answer them. When her father and stepmother pressed her, saying that a woman does not end her life alone and that she might at least reply now and then, she said only "Omoedomo kai nakarubemi shinoureba tsurenaki tomo ya hito no miruramu" and fell silent. Her parents wished to see her married, but she said always that she would never take a husband, and died unmarried at twenty-nine. That is the whole of the section.
Of the Lady of the Bedchamber the prose gives nothing beyond the title; the poet is her eldest daughter, brought up by a stepmother. Some hold that she, like the Yoshiie of the preceding section, is an invented figure.
Neither time nor place is given. The setting is the period after her mother's early death, while she was in her stepmother's charge.
What prompted the poem was that things did not go as she would have wished.
The section goes on to the poem she made with a spray of plum. This one was later included in the Kokin-shū, attributed there to Taira no Sadafun.

The life named in the first line is one that will not last out; the verb for enduring to the end is negated.
What follows is the interval of waiting for that end, with a particle of limitation marking how short it is.
The word for grief being thick comes from the growth of plants, and means simply that there is a great deal of it.
The closing is a wish: that she might not sigh so. Since the life is short, she would at least not spend it grieving. Cast as a wish, it in fact reports how much grieving there is; and the prose's note that she died at twenty-nine gives the poem its weight in retrospect.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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