Mizusaezo sumitaenikeru konohachiru arashinoyamano kokorobososani

English Translation

Even the water
has ceased to run clear and dwell
here, where the leaves fall
in the loneliness of hills
the storm has stripped bare of them

Meaning

Even the water has ceased to run clear and to dwell here—for the loneliness of these hills where the storm strips the leaves away.

Commentary

Section 16: Back to the Capital from the Eastern Hills

In the eighth month, when the moon of past the twentieth stood beautiful toward dawn, with the hills dark on one side and the sound of the waterfall like nothing else, the author gazed and gazed at it and made a poem.
Setting out at last from the Eastern Hills for the capital, she found that the fields which had shown nothing but water when she came had all been reaped, and the change drew another poem.
Toward the end of the tenth month she came back for a brief look. The leaves that had grown thick and dark had scattered without one left, the whole prospect opened out and full of feeling, and the stream that had run so pleasantly was buried under leaves with only its channel showing. She made a poem on that.
She had told a nun living there that if she lived until spring she would certainly come again, and asked to be sent word as soon as the blossom was at its height; but the year turned and no message came, and by past the tenth of the third month she sent a poem to prompt her.
Having moved to another household, near the time of the moon, in a room close by the bamboo, she was woken again and again by the sound of the wind and could not settle to sleep, and composed another poem.
Around autumn she left that house for another, and sent a poem to the host of the place where she had been staying.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Of the nun in the Eastern Hills and of the host of the lodging, the text gives neither name nor station. A tabi naru tokoro is a stay at a house other than one's own, as when avoiding an unlucky direction.

Toward the end of the tenth month, Manju 2 (1025), on a brief return visit to the Eastern Hills where she had lived.

The thick dark foliage had scattered without one leaf left, and the stream that had run so pleasantly was buried under leaves with only its channel showing. Seeing that change is what drew the poem.

It is a solitary poem, and no reply is recorded. On this visit she made her promise with the nun of the Eastern Hills, and the following spring, over that promise, she sends "Chigiriokishi hananosakario tsugenukana haruyamadakonu hanayaniowanu."

In the first line sae adds—the water too, on top of everything else—and zo is emphatic, bound to the attributive keru at the end of the second. Sumitae is a pivot: the water ceasing to run clear, and people ceasing to dwell; in a poem about hills whose residents have gone, that single word carries the weight. Konoha chiru leads into arashi, and konoha, chiru and arashi run on as associated words. The final ni marks cause, and the poem breaks off on a noun. The visible fact of a pleasant stream reduced to a channel is laid over the emptiness left by their departure; where "Nawashirono mizukagebakari mieshitano karihatsurumade nagainishikeri" measured elapsed time by the fields, this one measures an absence by the water itself.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other