鳴海がた和歌のうら風へだてずば
おなじこゝろに神もうくらむ
おなじこゝろに神もうくらむ
- Roma-ji
-
Narumigata waka no urakaze hedatezuba onaji kokoro ni kami mo ukuramu
- English Translation
-
If Narumi Bay
and the wind off Waka Shore
are not held apart,
then the god here too will take
my poem with the same heart.
- Meaning
- If no distance is kept between Narumi Bay and the wind off the Bay of Poetry, then this god too will receive my poem with the same heart.
- Commentary
-
Section 6 The Owari Road: from Ichi no Miya to Narumi Bay
The journey of the Izayoi Nikki passes out of Mino and onto the Owari road. After crossing the Sunomata by its floating bridge, she passes a shrine called Ichi no Miya and makes a poem there. On the twentieth she goes by the post station of Orito in Owari, and since the road did not take her out of her way she calls at the Atsuta shrine, brings out her inkstone, and writes out four poems to offer. Passing Narumi Bay, she finds the tide out and goes along the flats without hindrance. Just then a great many shore plovers went on ahead of her, looking for all the world as though they were showing her the way, and she made a poem. She had heard that the capital-bird was to be found only about the Sumida River, but the bird with the red bill and red feet was here on this shore as well, and seeing it she made one more poem; with that the Owari passage closes.
Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori, on her way from the capital to Kamakura to press her suit over the inheritance of the Hosokawa estate in Harima. With her went the Ajari no Kimi, the mountain ascetic who served as her guide, and her attendants. All seven poems of this section are her own, with no one to answer them. Four of them are votive poems, written out with her inkstone and offered at the Atsuta shrine; the other three are solitary poems of the road.
The twentieth of the tenth month of Koan 2 (1279), before the god at the Atsuta shrine in Owari.
It is the second of the four poems she wrote out with her inkstone and offered there.
Being an offering, it has no reply. The posture it takes, of pressing a claim by way of the art of poetry, runs on into the Kamakura chapters, where she keeps up an exchange of poems with the people of the capital.
The poem binds a bay in Owari to a shore in Kii by the single heart of the art of poetry. The first line names the place before her; the second names a famous poetic site far off in Kii, a name that also stands for the way of poetry itself. Bay, shore and wind hang together as words of the coast, so that the two places are set within one landscape. The third line is a negative conditional: if no distance is kept. The fourth line, with the same heart, holds together the heart of the god and the heart of the poet. The verb that closes the poem means to receive, in present conjecture: as the god of poetry receives a poem, so this god will receive it too. The Bay of Poetry had already been used for the way of poetry in "Waka no ura ni kakitodometaru moshiogusa kore o mukashi no katami tomo miyo," so the word she entrusted to her child in the capital is taken up again here, before a god on the road.
- Author
- Abutsu-ni
- Source
- Izayoi Nikki
- Other
-
- First Shrine is its name— and even the name draws me; surely it must guard the one Law, in which there is neither a second nor third.
- I pray, then, I pray: let what I long for come true at Narumi Bay— the tide that draws off the flats goes as the god wills it, too.
- As the high tide comes in, so I have come, making for Narumi Bay— seeking the sea-grass, the eyes in which the god shows pity.
- The rain and the wind must be left to the god's will— then let there be no hindrance set upon the road that lies ahead of me now.