Yamachikaki iriainokaneno koegotoni kōrukokorono kazuwashiruramu

English Translation

There, close to the hills
at each voice of the evening bell
sounding out its stroke
the number of the times my heart
has longed for you, you will know

Meaning

There among the hills, at each stroke of the evening bell, you must know how many times my heart has longed for you.

Commentary

241 When I Was in Retreat at Kiyomizu

While the author was in retreat at Kiyomizu, the Empress sent a messenger expressly with a letter. On reddish Chinese paper, in cursive script, stood this poem, followed by the remark that all the same it was a very long stay.

The Empress is Teishi, consort of Emperor Ichijō. Kiyomizu is the temple of that name, known for the efficacy of its Kannon and much used for retreats.

The time is the period of the author's retreat; the places are Kiyomizu and the Empress's residence.

The immediate occasion is that she had gone from home to the temple and stayed away a long while. The poem is followed by a light reproach about the length of it.

Having brought nothing suitable with her on the journey, the author wrote her reply on a purple lotus petal and sent it back. Her own poem is not recorded.

The first line places the addressee at once: close to the hills, which is where Kiyomizu stands. The second names the bell rung at nightfall — a sound long associated in poetry with impermanence and with parting.

The third line means at every one of them, and sets the repeated striking of the bell against the repetition of a feeling. Each stroke counts off one more turn of longing, so that a sequence of sounds converts directly into a quantity.

The fourth line names whose heart it is, and the closing auxiliary is one of conjecture about what cannot be seen: you, over there, must know the number. Rather than stating the depth of her feeling outright, the Empress leaves the counting to the other person — and that displacement is the skill of the poem.

The Empress's poem in the two hundred and thirty-ninth section, "Minahitono hanayachōyato isoguhimo wagakokorooba kimizoshirikeru," takes the same shape: it is you who know my heart. But here the bell of the temple supplies a concrete unit of counting, so that both the distance between them and the length of the absence are rendered as a measurable quantity. That the author answered on a lotus petal rather than on paper, using only what the temple itself provided, keeps to the same habit this section shows throughout, of drawing the gift and the place into the poem.

Author

Empress Teishi

Source

Makura no Soshi

Other