Omōenu kakiho ni oreba nadeshiko no hana ni zo tsuyu wa tamarazarikeri

English Translation

Set by a hedgerow
I never looked to stand at,
the pink holds no dew
upon its flower at all —
nothing gathers, nothing stays.

Meaning

Standing at a hedge I never expected, the pink cannot hold even the dew upon its flower.

Commentary

4 Exchanges with Kaneie

After the marriage was settled, the author stayed for a time at a temporary lodging. Kaneie visited her there and sent a letter the next morning. In the ninth month a run of days of abstinence kept him away for two nights together, and only letters passed. His visits then grew infrequent; on a rainy evening he sent word that he would come, and in the tenth month he pleaded abstinence as a reason for staying away. Poems were exchanged on each occasion, and the author's helplessness as the one who waits accumulates through them. While these exchanges continue, the day approaches when her father Tomoyasu must go down to Mutsu.
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, not long after the marriage, and the place is the temporary lodging where the author was staying.
On the morning after his visit a letter came saying that he had hoped for a quiet day at least, but that it had seemed inconvenient, and asking how she did, adding that to him it felt like being hidden away in the mountains. She sent back this poem and nothing else.
After this exchange the ninth month came, and when days of abstinence kept Kaneie away, she composed "Kiekaeru tsuyu mo mada hinu sode no ue ni kesa wa shigururu sora mo warinashi."

The opening means unlooked-for, beyond expectation, and refers to the unfamiliar lodging. The verb in the second line means to be in a place, though some read into it, by association with the flower, the sense of breaking off a stem. The pink of the third line stands for the author herself; in the poetry of the age the flower is regularly made to figure a woman or a beloved. The closing lines describe dew that will not remain upon the blossom, and the emphatic particle resolving in the exclamatory form deepens the note of feeling. The dew may be read as tears or as the man's affection. The complaint that in an unsettled lodging the heart too cannot settle is entrusted to the image of flower and dew, and no resentment is ever spoken outright.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other