Izure to mo wakanu kokoro wa soetaredo kotabi wa saki ni minu hito no gari

English Translation

I have added a
heart that draws no line between
the two of you — yet
this time I send it to one
whose hand I have not yet seen.

Meaning

I have enclosed a heart that makes no distinction between you; and yet this time I send it to the one whose hand I have never seen.

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.
His complaint about the borrowed hand had again been answered in a borrowed hand, so Kaneie wrote once more and set this poem at the edge of a formal letter, with a note to the effect that an earnest reply was all he could wish for, but that to be denied her own hand even this time was very unkind.
To this too the household replied as before. The months passed in formal correspondence alone until autumn came, leading on to "Shika no ne mo kikoenu sato ni suminagara ayashiku awanu me o mo miru kana."

The opening means toward either of you, the one who writes and the one who does not. The second line speaks of a heart that makes no distinction, and then the fourth line narrows it with this time, revealing that he does after all wish to reach the lady herself. The one whose hand he has not seen is the author. The closing suffix means to the place of a person, and the verb that should follow is left unsaid, so that the poem trails off and leaves its feeling suspended. Where "Hamachidori ato mo nagisa ni fumi mireba ware o kosu nami uchi yaketsuramu" entrusted the same grievance to a scene, this one repeats it plainly, in other words and without metaphor.

Author

Fujiwara no Kaneie

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other