Sore yue ni tobiwakarete mo ashitazu no ko o omou kata wa nao zo kanashiki

English Translation

It was for their sake
that I flew and left them; still,
the reed-crane's grieving
for her young is grief for all
that, and no easier borne.

Meaning

It was for their sake that I flew away and left them; and still the reed-crane's love for her young is grief, and none the less for that.

Commentary

Section 20 The Exchange with the Shin-Chunagon of Watoku-mon'in

The lady known as the Shin-Chunagon of Watoku-mon'in is a daughter of the Kyogoku Middle Counsellor Teika; her father placed her in the service of the former Ise Priestess of Fukakusa, and there she has remained through the years. Since that Priestess adopted the present retired empress as her child, the lady has passed with her and serves her still. She is a sister of the Mimbukyo no Suke who composed the lines about a sorrowing self and a seaweed-gathering boat. Being the child of such a man, she used to hide her own poems and insist that no one should hear them; but troubled by the uncertainty of Abutsu-ni's far-off journey, she wrote at length of moving things and set down a poem, running it on into the words of the letter so that it hardly looked like a poem at all. That seems to Abutsu-ni no ordinary attention. Abutsu-ni answers her. Then, taking the occasion, and thinking that this lady alone would be moved by it, she writes out and sends two poems about how the late Lay Novice Major Counsellor comes and stands beside her even on her grass pillow, appearing to her in dreams. The lady goes to great trouble to find a courier and answers again. That she had hidden her poems so strictly was, after all, a matter of the occasion. Two poems come from her.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori, living at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura. The Shin-Chunagon is a daughter of the Kyogoku Middle Counsellor Teika, placed by her father with the former Priestess of Fukakusa and grown old in that service; since the Priestess adopted the present retired empress, she passed with her and serves her still. Teika was the father of Abutsu-ni's late husband Tameie, so that the Shin-Chunagon is Tameie's sister and Abutsu-ni's late husband's sibling. The late Lay Novice Major Counsellor is Tameie himself, and the four poems in the second half of this section turn on dreams of him. It is because of that kinship that Abutsu-ni thought this lady alone would be moved.

Around the beginning of summer in Koan 3 (1280), a poem in the reply sent from Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura to the capital.

It answers the Shin-Chunagon's "Ikabakari ko o omou tsuru no tobiwakare narawanu tabi no sora ni nakuramu."

Taking the occasion of this reply, Abutsu-ni goes on to write of how the dead Tameie stands beside her even on her grass pillow and appears to her in dreams, thinking that this lady alone would be moved by it.

The reply accepts the sympathy and adds that the parting was of her own choosing. The first line means precisely because of them, taking what the sent poem had drawn as a misfortune and turning it into the reason for the act. The second line takes up the sent poem's flying away and turns concessive. The third line names the reed-crane, a variant for the bird of the sent poem. The fourth line runs a syllable long, matching in form, extra syllable and all, the second line of the poem it answers; the noun there means the side or direction of a feeling. The closing line binds an emphatic particle to the adjective: for all that, it is still grief. The contradiction of having left her children for their sake is made the very frame of the poem, and it answers the preface, where she writes that since no one else sent her on this road she could not stay behind merely because going was hard.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other