Obotsukana oto naki taki no mizu nare ya yukue mo shiranu se o zo tazunuru

English Translation

How uncertain — are
you the water of a fall
that makes no sound? I
search after shallows whose course
I cannot even discern.

Meaning

How unsettling this is. Are you the water of a soundless waterfall? I go on searching for shallows whose course I cannot know.

Commentary

3 The Marriage to Kaneie Is Settled

Letters came from Kaneie again and again, and still the author did not answer. Her father Tomoyasu said it was a presumption to leave him waiting and that a proper reply ought to be sent, so he had a suitable person write one on her behalf. Kaneie took this in earnest and was delighted, and letters passed frequently between the houses; but he complained that the hand was not hers and asked repeatedly for an answer written by the lady herself. Each time, the household put him off with another substitute's hand, and the months went by in nothing but formal correspondence. Autumn came, and through the exchange of poems the two were drawn on toward marriage.
Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and at this time Assistant Commander of the Right Guards; he would rise to be regent and chancellor. The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu, a man of the provincial governor class who would go down to Mutsu as its governor at the end of this year.
It is the eighth year of Tenryaku, from early summer into autumn, and the place is the residence of the author's father Tomoyasu.
After the reply to his first suit, Kaneie wrote once more and received no answer. The poem was composed to reproach that silence.
When word was sent back that an answer would now come from her side, a poem arrived at once, as though he had known it in advance: "Hito shirezu imaya imaya to matsu hodo ni kaeri konu koso wabishikarikere."

The first line expresses the unease of one who cannot see clearly and cannot settle. The soundless waterfall of the second and third lines stands for the absence of any reply, and the word for sound echoes the phrase in his poem of courtship about knowing a person only by report. The construction that follows joins a copula to an interrogative particle, so that the line asks whether this is indeed the case. The shallows whose course cannot be known continue the imagery of water, turning the search for an answer directly into landscape. The closing verb is in the attributive form required by the emphatic particle earlier in the line. Waterfall, water and shallows are strung together as related words in a deliberately worked poem, and the reproach for silence is never made openly but entrusted to metaphor.

Author

Fujiwara no Kaneie

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other