Sadame naku kiekaeritsuru tsuyu yori mo soradanome suru ware wa nani nari

English Translation

More than the dew that
faded so uncertainly
away — what am I,
who go on hoping upon
an empty promise of sky?

Meaning

More uncertain than the dew that faded away — what am I, who keep on hoping for what will never come?

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 autumn in the eighth year of Tenryaku, and the place is the residence of the author's father Tomoyasu.
It was composed in answer to Kaneie's morning poem, in which he said he had faded away like dew.
After this exchange the author stayed for a time at a temporary lodging, where Kaneie visited her, leading on to the scene of "Omōenu kakiho ni oreba nadeshiko no hana ni zo tsuyu wa tamarazarikeri."

She gathers up his fading, his dew and his sky, and returns them all. The opening means unfixed, not to be relied upon; it speaks of the frailty of dew while pointing quietly at the unsettledness of his own heart. The third line sets up a comparison, and the fourth turns it toward the phrase for a hope with nothing behind it. Where he had used the word for sky to mean both the dawn and a mind gone absent, she takes it in the sense of empty and vain. The close asks what she herself can be, a self-mockery whose flat declarative ending leaves a note close to resignation. She answers his lament by taking it over entirely as her own.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other