Tamazusa o miru ni namida no kakaru kana iso kosu kaze wa kiku kokochi shite

English Translation

Your letter, and, as
I read it, how the tears come—
for I seem to hear
the very sound of that wind
crossing the rocks where you are.

Meaning

Reading your letter, how the tears come; for I seem to hear the very wind that crosses the rocks where you are.

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the Middle Captain of Nakanoin, now, it seems, a lay monk of the third rank; she lives in the same world and yet wholly withdrawn from it, given to religious practice.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); a poem in the reply from her elder sister, which reached Kamakura after some time.

It answers "Yomosugara namida mo fumi mo kakiaezu iso kosu kaze ni hitori okiite."

After this poem the prose explains the elder sister's circumstances and then gives the younger sister's reply.

The reply makes a poem out of the act of reading a letter. The first line uses the elegant word for a letter; where the sent poem was spoken from the side of one writing, this is spoken from the side of one reading, so that between them the two poems complete the passage of the letter. The particle in the second line means as one does something, marking the simultaneity of reading and weeping. The verb in the third line means that tears fall on something, and standing beside the word for wind it faintly carries the sense of wind striking too; the final particle is exclamatory. The fourth line lifts the sent poem's fourth line whole, and by that line it is plain which poem is being answered. The closing line breaks off: in the capital she cannot possibly hear a wind crossing rocks by the sea, and yet reading the letter she seems to. It is the same posture as the Mikushige-dono's "Kakikurashi yuki furu sora no nagame ni mo hodo wa kumoi no aware o zo shiru," which answered by gazing at the same sky; here the answer is to hear the same wind. Separation is consoled by naming one thing that can be shared.

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other