Kiekaeru tsuyu mo mada hinu sode no ue ni kesa wa shigururu sora mo warinashi

English Translation

The dew that faded
has not yet dried on my sleeve,
and this morning even
the sky comes down in cold rain —
it is more than I can bear.

Meaning

The dew that faded away has not yet dried upon my sleeve, and this morning the sky too comes down in cold rain. It is past bearing.

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 the end of the ninth month in the eighth year of Tenryaku, and the place is the author's own dwelling.
Days of abstinence had kept Kaneie away for two nights and only a letter had come. This poem was composed in reply to it.
Kaneie answered at once with "Omoiyaru kokoro no sora ni narinureba kesa wa shiguru to miyuru naru ramu," and appeared in person before she had finished writing her reply.

The opening verb describes a spirit on the point of vanishing, taking over for herself the very word Kaneie had used in his morning poem. The second line says the dew has not yet dried, using the familiar figure by which dew stands for tears. The third line fixes the place, and the fourth carries the eye outward to the cold rain in the morning sky. Tears on the sleeve and rain in the sky are laid one upon the other, so that she is soaked from within and from without at once. The closing word means unbearable, beyond remedy, and it lets her resentment at two nights of absence be spoken as though it were the weather's fault. Dew, drying, cold rain and sky bind the whole poem together through the imagery of water.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other