Hitori shite ikani semashi to wabitsureba soyo to mo mae no ogi zo kotauru

English Translation

Alone here, what am
I to do — and when I sigh
it over, only
the reeds before the house rustle
and answer: so it is, so

Meaning

Alone here, what am I to do? And when I sigh it over, only the reeds before the house rustle and answer: so it is.

Commentary

148 The Bay of Naniwa

A husband and wife were living near Naniwa in the province of Tsu. They were not of poor family, but had come down in the world and could no longer live; so the man urged his wife to go up to the capital and enter service, saying that he would set himself to rights and they would meet again. She went, but in her forlornness she thought of him and grieved with "Hitori shite ikani semashi to wabitsureba soyo to mo mae no ogi zo kotauru". In service in the capital her clothes and her circumstances improved, but she had no one close to her and could learn nothing of her husband. In time a nobleman of the capital took notice of her and she became his wife. Still she was anxious about her former husband, and saying she would go to Naniwa for a purification and to see the place, she went there — and even the old house was gone. She could not find him, and could not tell her attendants the truth; they urged her to go home as it was growing dark. While she hesitated, saying only a little longer, a poor man selling reeds passed before the carriage. He resembled her husband, so she said to call the man over, as she wished to buy his reeds; and the attendants, thinking it strange, called him, and it was he. She tried to have him paid far more than the reeds were worth, and the attendants objected. Meanwhile the man recognised her, and in shame at his condition threw down the reeds and fled into a house and huddled behind the hearth. She said to bring him, and the attendants made a commotion searching for him. Finding him and saying that here was a gift for him and what a fool he was, they were dragging him out when he wrote a letter and asked that it be taken to her. They thought it odd, but carried it. Opening it, she read "Kimi nakute ashikarikeri to omou ni mo itodo Naniwa no ura zo sumiuki", and wept aloud for the sorrow of it. What she answered is not known. She sent the gift back with a letter attached, and what became of it afterwards is not known: "Ashikaraji tote koso hito no wakarekeme nanika Naniwa no ura mo sumiuki". That is the whole of the section.
Tsu is Settsu province, and Naniwa a place within it. Neither husband nor wife is named. The last poem is taken to be a later addition.
The setting is the capital, just after she had left her husband and come up to enter service.
What prompted the poem was that forlornness.
Afterwards she became a nobleman's wife, and the section moves to her meeting with her husband, now selling reeds at Naniwa.

The opening asks what she is to do alone, in a hesitant grammar of half-formed purpose.
What follows gives the reason: she is at a loss.
The word in the third line is both the rustle of reeds in the wind and the words for yes, just so, so that the sound of the wind is heard as a reply.
The closing, with an emphatic particle governing the verb, says that the reeds answer. There is no one to answer, and only the sound of the grass does. Not a word states the loneliness; a single rustle carries it.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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