Kiekaeri nagamuru sora mo kakikurete hodo wa kumoi zo yuki ni nariyuku

English Translation

My heart fails me, and
the sky I gaze at darkens
over, and between
us lies the width of heaven,
and it is turning to snow.

Meaning

My heart fails me; the sky I watch has darkened over, the whole width of heaven lies between us, and now it is turning to snow.

Commentary

Section 14 The Exchange with the Mikushige-dono of Shikken-mon'in

The lady known as the Mikushige-dono of Shikken-mon'in is a daughter of the Koga Chancellor Michiteru. She too has had many poems taken up, from the Shokusenzaishu onward and in the private collections of two or three houses, so that her name is well known. She now serves Anka-mon'in as one of her ladies. On the day before Abutsu-ni set out for the east, she went to the Kitashirakawa residence to take her leave, but the lady did not appear. From Kamakura she therefore writes: that the preparations of that one night were so hurried she could not even send word, and that even as she left in haste the lady was on her mind. Gathering together the forlornness of a year ending while she sleeps on the road, and the ceaselessness of the snow, she adds a poem. She had hoped for a reply by the first sure hand; and today, the twenty-second of the twelfth month, the letter comes, welcome and unlooked for. In it the lady says she would like to write of everything in detail, but that tonight she is caught up in an imperial progress made to avoid an unlucky direction and cannot say all she means, which she regrets; and that on the very day of the farewell visit she had gathered the younger women to go and see the autumn leaves at Minedono, so that she heard of it all only afterwards — why, she asks, was she not told? A poem comes with this. Then, guessing at what followed, that it was turning to snow, she adds another. Abutsu-ni this time answers only the poem about not being told the day of departure.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori, living at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura. The Mikushige-dono served Shikken-mon'in and was a daughter of the Koga Chancellor Michiteru, a poet with many pieces in the imperial anthologies from the Shokusenzaishu onward and in the private collections of several houses; she now serves Anka-mon'in. Both Shikken-mon'in and Anka-mon'in were daughters of the retired emperor Go-Takakura. Kitashirakawa was Anka-mon'in's residence, and Minedono was the mountain villa of Kujo Michiie. The four poems of this section turn on a leave-taking in the capital that never took place, and the exchange is built so as to reach back in time.

Winter of Koan 2 (1279), a poem in a letter sent from Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura to the Mikushige-dono in the capital. Since the reply arrives on the twenty-second of the twelfth month, it must have been sent a little before that.

It went with a letter gathering together the failed leave-taking at Kitashirakawa on the day before her departure, the hurry of that night's preparations which left her no time to send word, the forlornness of a year ending while she sleeps on the road, and the ceaselessness of the snow.

She waited for a reply by the first sure hand, and the letter came on the twenty-second of the twelfth month with two poems in it, one of them guessing at what came after the last line of this one, the turning to snow.

Darkening sky, the distance between two people, and snow are said in one unbroken movement. The first line means to be so wrung with feeling that one seems to fade away, and it puts the forlornness first. The verb in the second line means to gaze while lost in thought, and the particle adds. The third line means to grow dark all over, and the same word covers both the clouding of the sky and the darkening of a heart. In the fourth line the word for interval means the distance between them, and the word for the reaches of the sky also means the imperial palace, which suits a correspondent in service at a royal household; the emphatic particle binds to the final verb. The closing line has the darkened sky turning into snow, taking up the prose phrase about snow without a break. Beginning from gazing at a sky, moving to distance, and arriving at snow, the poem lets a Kamakura winter sky stand for the whole space between her and the capital. What was winter rain in "Uchishigure furusato omou sode nurete yukusaki tōki noji no shinohara" on the Omi road has become snow here, and the turn of the season serves as the scale on which distance from the capital is measured.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other