Kusa mo ki mo kozo mishi mama ni kawaranedo arishi ni mo ninu kokochi nomi shite

English Translation

The grass and the trees
are as they were last year, all
of them unaltered—
and yet nothing feels the same
as it did in the old days.

Meaning

Grass and trees are unchanged, just as I saw them last year; and yet nothing feels as it once did.

Commentary

Section 19 The Cuckoo: The Exchange with Tameko

At the beginning of the fourth month a courier is going, and she writes again to the same Gon-Chunagon, saying among other things how she misses last year's spring and summer, and sends two poems. A reply comes again. It says that the grass and the trees are unchanged, just as she saw them last year, and yet nothing feels as it did — the poem running straight on into the prose of the letter — and then, turning to the question about the cuckoo, gives another poem. The lady adds that the Middle Captain Sanekata, having heard no cuckoo by the fifth month, is said to have sent from the province of Mutsu the lines about a cuckoo grown stale in the ears of the capital while the one on this side of the barrier suffers; that she was put in mind of that precedent, and that this letter of Abutsu-ni's was particularly graceful. Meanwhile the end of the fourth month came, and Abutsu-ni gave up hearing even a faint first note. Then she heard at second hand that at a place called Hiki-no-yatsu a great many voices had been heard by someone, and on hearing it she turns a poem over alone; but there is no help in it. Perhaps in the east, all the way to the far end of Mutsu, cuckoos have always been rare. If they did not sing at all it would be easier; that some rare person should have heard them seems to her, with all her heart, a thing to resent.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori, living at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura. The Gon-Chunagon is the daughter of Tamenori, the former Captain of the Right Watch, and serves in the household of Omiya-in; since Tamenori was a son of Tameie and a younger brother of Tameuji, she is a granddaughter of Abutsu-ni's late husband. After the enquiry in winter, the practice poems in spring and the exchange during the fever, the correspondence continues here with the same person. The Middle Captain Sanekata cited in the letter is the mid-Heian poet Fujiwara no Sanekata, who went down to the east as governor of Mutsu.

The fourth month of Koan 3 (1280), a poem in the reply that came from the capital to Kamakura.

It answers "Mishi yo koso kawarazaru rame kurehatete haru yori natsu ni utsuru kozue mo."

Its closing line runs straight on into the prose of the letter, which then turns to the question about the cuckoo and gives another poem.

The reply divides an unchanged landscape from an altered heart with a single concessive. The first line takes the sent poem's branch-tips and widens them to grass and trees in general. The second line uses the word for last year, picked up from the note saying that she missed last year's spring and summer. The third line answers the sent poem's conjecture with fact — they truly are unchanged — and then turns concessive, and by that one word what the sent poem had left out is added: something has changed. The fourth line says that it does not resemble what was before, showing that what altered is not the trees but the one who looks at them. The closing line limits with a particle meaning only and breaks off in a continuative form; and that broken end flows directly into the prose of the letter, so that poem and letter run without a seam. Told that the capital must be unchanged, the lady answers that its being unchanged is exactly what makes everything feel different — not consolation, but fellow feeling.

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other