Yomosugara namida mo fumi mo kakiaezu iso kosu kaze ni hitori okiite

English Translation

All the night long, I
can neither wipe them away
nor write it, my tears,
my letter—alone, awake
in wind that crosses the rocks.

Meaning

All night I can neither wipe the tears away nor finish the letter, sitting up alone in the wind that comes over the rocks.

Commentary

Section 15 The Exchange with Her Sisters

Hearing that there is a courier for the capital at dawn, Abutsu-ni sits up all night writing letters. Among them, to the elder sister with whom she is on terms of complete openness and mutual trust, she writes at length about the young children. As she writes, the wind and waves grow loud as they always do, and she sets down simply what is before her at that moment. In the same way she writes to her younger sister, the nun, whom she misses in her old home, and wraps up a few odds and ends of shore produce to send with it, adding a poem. After some time the replies of the two sisters arrive, and she finds them deeply moving. There is a poem from the elder sister, who was the wife of the man known as the Middle Captain of Nakanoin, now, it seems, a lay monk of the third rank; she lives in the same world and yet wholly withdrawn from it, given to religious practice. The younger sister writes at length in answer to the poem about cutting seaweed and burning salt, saying gracefully that a sea of tears for those one loves is banked up under the pillow in the capital too, and adds a poem of her own. She too had served Anka-mon'in. That both of them should set down, thought by thought, the things they keep to themselves, is deeply moving and finely done.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori, living at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura. Her elder sister was the wife of the man known as the Middle Captain of Nakanoin, now a lay monk of the third rank; she lives in the same world and yet wholly apart from it, given to religious practice, and she is the one person with whom Abutsu-ni is entirely open. The younger sister is a nun who had served Anka-mon'in. The prose calls the two of them simply the pair of sisters. What Abutsu-ni wrote to her elder sister was about the young children left behind in the capital.

Near the end of Koan 2 (1279), at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura; she has heard of a courier for the capital at dawn and sits up all night writing.

While writing at length to her elder sister about the young children, she heard the wind and waves grow loud as they always did, and set down simply what was before her.

After some time a reply came from her elder sister, whose poem takes over the fourth line of this one unchanged.

Without ornament, the poem offers only the one fact of what she is doing at that moment. The first line means all night long, transferring straight into verse the prose phrase about sitting up through the night. The second line sets two unlike things side by side so that a single word below may take both. The third line is a pivot: the same verb means to wipe tears away and to write a letter, neither of which she can finish, so that a whole night of weeping and writing is said at one stroke. The fourth line names the wind coming in over the rocks, taking up the prose remark that the wind and waves were loud as usual, and suiting a lodging at the foot of the hills near the shore. The closing line breaks off in a continuative form and adds nothing after it. As the prose says, she set down simply what was before her; apart from the one pivot the poem does no more than place scene and feeling side by side, and that plainness is itself proof that the letter was for someone with whom nothing needed to be arranged.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other