Ōsakawa munenomitsuneni hashiraino mitsukuruhitoya aramutoomoeba

English Translation

At Ōsaka now
it is my heart, always so
racing like that spring —
for I think there may be one
who will come and find us here

Meaning

At Ōsaka my heart races and races — like the running spring there — for I keep thinking someone may come upon us.

Commentary

317 In an Awkward Place

Meeting and talking with someone in a place where it was awkward to be seen, her heart began to pound violently. When the other person asked why she should be so agitated, she answered with this poem.

The other person is neither named nor described.

The place is given only as somewhere it would not do to be seen.

The immediate occasion is being asked why her heart was racing.

The text gives the poem alone; no reply is recorded.

The first line names the barrier that stood on the border of Yamashiro and Ōmi, whose name contains the verb to meet and which has served since early times as a figure for lovers' meetings. Here the place of this secret meeting is simply called Ōsaka.

The second line says that it is her heart, and only her heart, that will not keep still. The third names the celebrated running spring at that barrier, and at the same time supplies, from the verb to run, the idiom for a racing heart. It is a place name doing the work of a verb, and it is the hinge of the poem.

The fourth line asks whether there may be someone who will find them, and the close gives the reason — because I keep thinking so — closing the poem by supplying at last the cause of the pounding.

Barrier and spring are linked terms, both landmarks of the same place; the spring becomes a heartbeat; and the barrier's name points to the meeting itself. Three words each wear two faces, one topographical and one emotional, so that a single point on the map is exchanged entire for a state of mind.

Set against "Yookomete torinosoranewa hakarutomo yoniōsakano sekiwayurusaji" in the hundred and thirty-sixth section, which stands on the side of the barrier that refuses passage, this poem belongs to someone already inside it, unable to be still — the same poetic place put to precisely opposite use.

Author

Sei Shōnagon

Source

Makura no Soshi

Other