Utagawashi hoka ni wataseru fumi mireba koko ya todae ni naramu to suramu

English Translation

How doubtful it is.
Seeing this letter meant to
cross to someone else,
I wonder — is it here that
the bridge is to break away?

Meaning

How full of doubt I am. Seeing this letter meant to cross to another, I wonder whether it is here that the bridge will break.

Commentary

7 Sighing Through the Night Alone; The Faded Chrysanthemum

In the ninth month, while Kaneie was out, the author idly opened a box that lay there and found in it a letter he had meant to send to another woman. Astonished, she resolved to let him know at least that she had seen it, and wrote a poem there. While she was still turning it over, at the end of the tenth month he failed to appear for three nights running. She watched a while without letting anything show, and there were signs. Toward evening he said there was business at the palace he could not avoid and went out; she had someone follow him, and word came back that he had stopped at such and such a place in Machi no Kōji. So it was true, she thought, and the wretchedness of it was great, but she did not know how to speak of it. Two or three days later, near dawn, someone knocked at the gate. She was sure who it was, but it was too painful, and she did not have it opened; Kaneie went off to the house that must have been the other woman's. The next morning, resolved not to let it pass, she wrote with more than usual care and sent the poem fixed to a chrysanthemum whose color had faded.
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, and had borne Michitsuna only at the end of the eighth month of this year. The woman of Machi no Kōji is named by that designation alone, her family never disclosed, and she appears repeatedly in the diary hereafter.
It is around the ninth month of the ninth year of Tenryaku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
While Kaneie was out she opened a box and found in it a letter addressed to another woman. She wrote this poem meaning to let him know that she had seen it.
While she was still turning the matter over, his visits ceased for three nights at the end of the tenth month, and it became clear that he was going to the woman of Machi no Kōji. The scene of "Nagekitsutsu hitori nuru yo no akuru ma wa ikani hisashiki mono to ka wa shiru" follows.

The first line stands as a complete statement, so that everything that follows is gathered under that one word of doubt. The second line means intended to be sent elsewhere. The verb of sending also means to lay a bridge across, and it belongs with the word in the fourth line for a break or lapse, which likewise describes a bridge broken partway. Between them the two words lay down, beneath the surface, the image of a bridge that reaches halfway and gives out. The third line means when she looks at that letter. The close piles one conjecture upon another, reflecting a mind that has not yet been able to make certain of the case. She neither accuses nor demands an answer; she reports only that she has seen — and that restraint carries all the more weight for it.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other