Yamanohani iribinokagewa irihatete kokorobosokuzo nagameyarareshi

English Translation

On the mountain's rim
the light of the setting sun
has gone wholly in,
and with a forlorn heart I
gazed away toward where you are

Meaning

The light of the setting sun went wholly down behind the ridge, and with a forlorn heart I found myself gazing off toward where you are.

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 fourth month of Manju 2 (1025); sent the morning after the man who drank at the spring had returned to the capital.

With the evening sun striking clear and the whole capital visible in the distance, he had said he must go back and had felt the parting keenly. The next morning he wrote of how the sun had gone right down on his road home.

With this the exchange over the spring comes to an end, and the poems of the days in the Eastern Hills pass thereafter between the author and the woman who was with her.

Yama no ha is where the ridgeline meets the sky. Kage in the second line means light, here the light of the setting sun. Irihatete, "gone entirely in," repeats the iri of iribi and presses the point. In the fourth line zo is emphatic, bound to shi, the attributive of the past auxiliary ki, at the close; the raru of yararu marks something happening of itself, so that he found himself gazing. He states only that the sun went down, and the statement passes straight into the loneliness of one who has parted, facing in exactly the opposite direction from the prose line about seeing the whole capital from the hills. Where the two poems at the spring were a contest of wit over an old verse, this one has turned to feeling, and setting them side by side as the work of one man marks the shift from that scene back into ordinary life.

Source

Sarashina Nikki

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