Harubaru to yukusaki tōku shitawarete ikani sonata no sora o nagamemu

English Translation

Far and far you go,
and the way ahead is long—
I am drawn to you,
and with what heart shall I gaze
at the sky that lies your way?

Meaning

You go so far, and the road ahead is long; I am drawn after you, and with what heart shall I gaze at the sky over the country where you are?

Commentary

Section 3 The Parting Exchange of Poems

After the death of her husband Fujiwara no Tameie, Abutsu-ni fell into dispute with Tameie's heir Tameuji over the inheritance of the Hosokawa estate in Harima Province, and when her suit in the capital came to nothing she resolved to appeal directly to the shogunal court in Kamakura. As she made ready to leave, the garden and the brushwood fence, already grown wild even while she had kept them under her eye, seemed certain to grow wilder still in her absence, and the tears on the sleeves of those who clung to her could not be consoled. The Jiju and the Taifu in particular sank into such dejection that it pained her, and after talking them round she looked into the sleeping chamber and found the old pillow of the departed lying just as it had always lain. From there the parting exchanges follow one upon another: the poem written beside the pillow; the poem sent with the notebooks of verse handed down in the house, sealed with a colophon and dispatched to the Jiju; the Jiju's reply; the poem the Taifu set down in his writing practice and the answer added on the same sheet; the poem of the Risshi, the elder brother who came down from the mountain to see her off; the poem of the Ajari no Kimi, who was to travel with her as guide; and the poem sent to her only daughter, in service at the women's palace, together with her reply. Abutsu-ni records that she has written out the poems of her five children without leaving any out, admitting that to a parent's heart every one of them seemed moving, and then, telling herself that such weakness will not do, she casts it all off and sets out.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori. Tameie was a poet of the Mikohidari house and a son of Fujiwara no Teika. The Jiju is her son Reizei Tamesuke, founder of the Reizei house, seventeen by the old count at this time; the Taifu is his younger brother Tamemori, then fifteen. The Risshi is a son in holy orders, called in the text the Jiju's elder brother, whom the interlinear note names Gensho. The Ajari no Kimi is a mountain ascetic, described in the text as elder than these, whom the note names Keiyu. There was only one daughter, in service at what the text calls the women's palace close by, which the note identifies as Shin'yomeimon'in. Abutsu-ni gathers all five together under the phrase 'her five children'.

The tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), at her house in the capital before she sets out, in the scene that follows the sending of the notebooks to the Jiju and the arrival of his reply.

The Taifu was the child who had never left her side, and knowing all too well what it meant to be left behind, he was at his writing practice. When Abutsu-ni looked at the sheet, she found this poem set down on it.

She was moved by it beyond anything else, and on the same sheet she added, in comfort, "Tsukuzuku to sora na nagame so koishikuba michi tōku tomo haya kaerikomu." The sheet then passed on to the Risshi and to the Ajari no Kimi, who wrote on it in turn.

Among the parting poems of the Izayoi Nikki this is the one by the youngest hand. The opening adverb speaks of great distance, and the second line repeats the idea, so that the length of the journey is said twice over. In the third line the auxiliary is one of spontaneity: he is not choosing to long for her but cannot help it. The fourth line, the sky that lies your way, turns the distance into something the eye can rest on. The final verb is one of conjecture, answering the interrogative earlier in the line, so that the poem closes without an answer, on the question of how he is to go on gazing. The prose notes that he did not say this aloud but set it down in his writing practice, and that reticence matches the unfinished note of the poem.

Author

Reizei Tamemori

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other