Mishimamani moeshikemuriwa tsukinishio ikagatazuneshi nobenosasahara

English Translation

Even as I watched
the smoke of the burning failed
and was spent, and gone—
how then did she find her way
to the bamboo grass, the moor

Meaning

Even as I watched, the smoke of the burning was spent; how then did she find it—that bamboo grass on the moor?

Commentary

Section 14: The Death of the Sister

On the first day of the fifth month her elder sister died after giving birth. Even the deaths of strangers had struck her from childhood as bitterly sad; that this was her own sister left her grief past speaking. Her mother and the others were all in the room where the body lay, while the author lay down with the two small children left behind as keepsakes, one on either side of her. Moonlight came through a gap in the ruined boarding of the roof and fell on a child's face, and it seemed to her so ill-omened that she covered the child with her sleeve, drew the other close, and lay there sunk in thought.
When the forty-nine days had passed, a kinsman sent word: the dead woman had asked that this be found and sent to her without fail, and though it could not be found at the time, someone had sent it only now, which was a sad thing; and with the message came the tale called The Prince Who Sought the Corpse. It moved her deeply, and she wrote a poem in reply.
Her sister's nurse, saying that there was nothing to keep her there any longer, went weeping back to the house she had come from, and the author sent her a poem, adding that she wished she would stay as a keepsake of the dead. The nurse answered that the water in her inkstone had frozen and nothing could be set down; the author sent another poem, and the nurse replied.
This nurse visited the sister's grave and came away weeping. Hearing of it, the author composed a poem; the woman who had been her stepmother answered it, the kinsman who had sent the tale added one of his own, and her brother, seeing them, composed one too, remembering the night of the funeral.
When the snow had fallen for days on end, the author's thoughts went out to a nun living on Mount Yoshino, and she composed one more poem.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her elder sister is the one with whom she read tales in the same house, and she died this year after childbirth; the small nieces left behind are the keepsakes spoken of. The nurse had served the sister. The woman who had been her stepmother is the former court lady who parted from her father and moved elsewhere. The brother attended the sister's funeral. The Prince Who Sought the Corpse is a tale no longer extant, said to have told of a nobleman who searched for the body of a woman he had visited, failed to find it, and took vows in despair of the world.

During the exchange of poems about the nurse's visit to the grave; at the house in the capital.

Seeing "Suminarenu nobenosasahara atohakamo nakunakuikani tazunewabikemu" from the kinsman who had sent the tale, the brother recalled that he had been present on the night of the funeral, and composed this.

With it the exchange over the sister's death closes. The section ends with the author's poem sent out in thought to the nun on Mount Yoshino during days of falling snow.

Mishi mama ni is "even as I was watching." Moeshi kemuri is the smoke of the pyre, shi being the attributive of the past auxiliary ki. In the third line tsuku is to be used up, ni is the continuative of the auxiliary of completion, and o is concessive: though it had burned itself out. Ikaga in the fourth line asks by what means she found the place, and the poem ends on a noun, taking up the very ground where the previous poem's search had been set and leaving it standing. What sets this poem apart in the sequence is the single fact only a man who stood there that night could offer: he watched the smoke go out. It carries tazunu and nobe no sasahara over from the poem before it and keeps the interrogative shape to the end, so that the sequence closes with its questions still unanswered.

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other