Okuyamano ishimanomizuo musubiagete akanumonotowa imanomiyashiru

English Translation

Deep in the mountains,
cupping up in your two hands
the water between stones—
is it only now you learn
one can never have enough?

Meaning

Cupping up the water that runs between the stones deep in the mountains—is it only now that you learn one can never have enough of it?

Commentary

Section 15: The Father Passed Over at the Appointments; the Beauty of the Eastern Hills

At the appointments in the first month of the new year the author's father should have received a post, but the hope came to nothing. On that fruitless morning a poem arrived from someone who must have felt the same, with a note about the restlessness of lying awake for daybreak, telling himself that surely this time it would come; and the author replied.
Toward the end of the fourth month, for reasons that had to be met, the household moved to a place in the Eastern Hills. Along the road the seedbeds with water let into them and the fields already planted stretched away, greening faintly and pleasant to look at. In the evening, with the shadow of the hills falling dark and close before the house, forlorn and full of feeling, a water rail called and called, and she made a poem.
Ryōzen being close by, she went to worship there; finding it hard going, she stopped at a stone-ringed spring at the mountain temple and drank from her cupped hands. Someone said one could never drink enough of that water, and the author made a poem, to which he replied. On their return, with the evening sun striking clear and the whole of the capital visible in the distance, this man, saying he must go back to the city, felt the parting keenly, and sent another poem the next morning.
When the sound of a monk at his dawn devotions came to her, solemn to hear, she pushed open the door: the ridgeline was paling into light, mist lay over the dark treetops, and the sky closed in by all that foliage, cloudy and lovely, pleased her more than blossom or maples at their height. A cuckoo, too, called over and over from a bough close at hand, and she made a poem of that daybreak and that voice.
Near the end of the month a cuckoo cried noisily from a tree down toward the valley, and she composed again. As she sat gazing, the woman who was with her said: is there anyone in the city hearing this voice now, anyone who spares a thought for us sunk in reverie here? and made a poem, which the author answered.
Near what she took for daybreak, a sound came from the hills as of many people approaching. Startled, she looked out and saw a deer that had come as far as the veranda and was belling there—a voice with no charm in it heard from close by. She made a poem on that, and another on hearing that an acquaintance had come near the house and turned back.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her father is Sugawara no Takasue, who hoped for a post at these appointments and was passed over. Of "the person of the same mind," "the man who drank the water," and "the woman who was with her," the text gives neither name nor station. Ryōzen is one of the peaks of the Eastern Hills, where a mountain temple stood.

After the move to the Eastern Hills in the fourth month of Manju 2 (1025); on the way back from Ryōzen, at the stone-ringed spring of the mountain temple.

The climb having been hard, she stopped at the spring and drank from her cupped hands, and someone remarked that one could never drink enough of that water. The poem answers him.

The man drinking replied with "Yamanoino shizukuninigoru mizuyorimo kowanaoakanu kokochikososure," and the next morning, on leaving for the capital, sent "Yamanohani iribinokagewa irihatete kokorobosokuzo nagameyarareshi."

The poem draws on a verse by Ki no Tsurayuki in the Kokinshū, composed at a stone-ringed spring on the pass over the Shiga hills, on parting from someone he had been talking with there: the water clouded by drops from his cupped hands, and a parting that left him unsatisfied. The pairing of a mountain spring with an unfinished leave-taking answers this scene exactly.

Okuyama no is the deep interior of the hills, far from any settlement, and ishima no mizu the water welling between rocks. Musubiagete, to lift water in cupped hands, takes up the older poem's musubu te no; akanu mono to wa takes up its akade. In the close ya is interrogative and nomi limits: is it only now that you find this out? The teasing is light. The wit lies in receiving his remark not as an observation of the moment but as something an old poem said long ago, and the two of them exchange it knowing perfectly well that a stone-ringed spring in the hills is precisely the setting of that poem's headnote.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other