Tsukuzuku to sora na nagame so koishikuba michi tōku tomo haya kaerikomu

English Translation

Do not sit and gaze
long at the sky, as you do—
if you long for me,
far though the road may run, still
I shall come home again soon.

Meaning

Do not sit gazing at the sky. If you miss me, then however long the road, I shall come home soon.

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 departure, as she looks at the Taifu's practice sheet.

Having found "Harubaru to yukusaki tōku shitawarete ikani sonata no sora o nagamemu" written there, and being moved by it beyond anything else, she added this poem on the same sheet.

The sheet went on to catch the eye of the Risshi, who had come down from the mountain to see her off, and he added "Ada ni nomi namida wa kakeji tabigoromo kokoro no yukite tachikaeru hodo."

The answer consoles by turning the child's own words inside out. The opening adverb describes sitting sunk in thought, and it anticipates exactly the condition his poem had described. The second line is a gentle prohibition, softer than a blunt one, and it cancels his closing line while keeping his very words, sky and gaze. The third line is a conditional built on the adjective for longing, restating his line about being drawn after her. The fourth line concedes the distance he had spoken of and refuses to let it count. The final verb is one of will, not conjecture: where his poem ended in surmise, hers ends in intention, answering an unanswerable question with the single word return.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other