Musubu te ni nigoru kokoro o susugi naba ukiyo no yume ya samegai no mizu

English Translation

If in cupped hands here
I could rinse this clouded heart,
would the fleeting dream
of this world break too—water
of the well they call Waking?

Meaning

If I could rinse this clouded heart in the water I cup in my hands, would the dream of this sorrowful world break as well—water of the well called Waking?

Commentary

Section 4 Setting Out on the Omi Road: from Awataguchi to Samegai

Casting off the parting exchanges, Abutsu-ni at last leaves the capital. The journey of the Izayoi Nikki begins here: at a place called Awataguchi she sends the carriage back, and from there the road is made on horseback and on foot. Before long she crosses the Barrier of Ausaka, and then, coming to Noji, she finds no one either behind or ahead; the day is drawing to its close, and just as she thinks how forlorn it all is, cold winter rain comes down as well. She had meant to reach a place called Kagami that night, but darkness fell before she could get there, and she stopped at Moruyama. Even there the rain followed after her. It was the night of the sixteenth, she notes, and being much wearied she lay down. In the faint remaining moonlight of daybreak she left Moruyama, and as she crossed the Yasu River only the hoofbeats of travellers going on ahead came clearly through a very deep mist. On the night of the seventeenth she stopped at the post station of Ono, where the moon came out and the gaps between the pines ranged along the ridge could be told apart, most beautifully. From there too she groped her way out through deep night mist, and came to the spring called Samegai. In summer, she thinks, one would hardly pass it by; and indeed those going on foot still stop and draw from it.

Every poem in this section is Abutsu-ni's own, with no one to answer her. She was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori. Left behind in the capital are the Jiju, that is Reizei Tamesuke, the Taifu Tamemori, and the daughter in service at the women's palace. Travelling with her is the Ajari no Kimi, whom the interlinear note names Keiyu, who had set out to escort her as guide, along with attendants and those going on foot. Since the carriage was sent back at Awataguchi, from here on the journey is made without it.

After stopping at the post station of Ono on the night of the seventeenth day of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279) and groping out through deep night mist; the scene is the spring at Samegai in Omi Province, in what is now Maibara in Shiga.

At the spring called Samegai she reflects that in summer one would hardly pass it by, and sees that those going on foot stop and draw from it even now. The poem is set down as what came to her at that sight.

It is a solitary poem, with no one to answer. The prose closes the Omi road with a phrase meaning that so it seemed to her, and the scene moves on to the Fujikawa at the barrier in Mino Province on the eighteenth.

This poem closes the Omi road, and it does more than describe the scene: it touches the meaning of the journey itself. The first line is the gesture of cupping both hands to lift water, and it draws on the poem by Ki no Tsurayuki placed at the head of the parting poems in the Kokin Wakashu, in which the water of a mountain well, clouded by drops from the hands that lift it, becomes a figure for parting from someone before one has had enough of them. The words for cupped hands, for clouding, and for the well are all carried over. But Abutsu-ni moves the clouding from the water to the heart, and turns the grief of parting into a wish to be made clean. The third line is a conditional, if I should rinse it. In the fourth line an interrogative particle asks whether the dream of this sorrowful world would break as well. In the closing line the verb meaning to wake is a pivot with the place name Samegai, so that the answer to the question stands there already as the name of the ground she walks on. Because the poem ends on a noun, it never says whether the dream breaks or not, and the journey east to plead a lawsuit is left standing as that dream of a sorrowful world.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other