Miyako made kataru mo tōshi omoine ni shinobu mukashi no yume no nagori o

English Translation

It is far, too far
to tell it to the city:
what is left to me
of a dream of the old days,
come as I lay in longing.

Meaning

It is too far to tell the capital of it: what remains of a dream of the old days, come to me as I lay thinking of him.

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 written from Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura to the capital.

Taking the occasion of her reply to the Shin-Chunagon, and thinking that this lady alone would be moved by it, she wrote out and sent two poems about how the late Lay Novice Major Counsellor stands beside her even on her grass pillow and appears to her in dreams; this is the first.

The reply is "Azumaji no kusa no makura wa tōkeredo katareba chikaki inishie no yume," which takes over the telling and the farness of this poem and denies them.

The poem looks all the way to the capital for someone to whom a dream of the dead can be told. The first line gives the distance from the east to the city. The second line means that it is too far to tell, the adjective covering both physical distance and the failure of words to arrive; behind it lies the assumption that a dream becomes tellable only when there is someone to tell it to. The third line names the sleep of one lying awake in longing, in which a dream comes as a continuation of the thought. The fourth line is of remembering the old days with the man now dead. The closing line ends on a noun and at the same time, by its final particle, turns back to the verb of telling in the second line, so that what she wishes to tell is named last. In this diary the word for the old days has meant the world of the dead Tameie ever since "Waka no ura ni kakitodometaru moshiogusa kore o mukashi no katami tomo miyo" among the parting poems, and the usage holds here. That this poem goes to the Shin-Chunagon is because she is Tameie's sister.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other