Geni ya geni fuyu no yo naranu maki no to mo osoku akuru wa wabishikarikeri

English Translation

Truly, truly so —
and though it is not the long
night of winter, still
a cedar door slow to open
is a wretched thing to bear.

Meaning

Quite so, quite so. It is not the long night of winter, and yet a door of good timber slow to open is a wretched thing.

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 the end of the tenth month of the ninth year of Tenryaku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
It was composed in answer to her poem reproaching him for the night the gate was not opened. He added that he had meant to wait for her reply until daybreak, but that an urgent summons had come, and that her complaint was entirely just.
After this reply the narrative records that Kaneie kept his other visits discreet for a while, though the author's wretchedness went on without end. The new year brings the scene of "Matsu hodo no kinō suginishi hana no e wa kyō oru koto zo kai nakarikeru."

The doubled phrase at the opening concedes her point entirely, the repetition measuring the strength of the assent. The second line means that it is not the winter night, famous for being slow to break, and so takes up her length of night from another side. The third names a door of good timber, cypress or the like, that is, the door of the house. The fourth receives her verb for breaking and takes it in the sense of a door opening instead. Where she had folded the breaking of day and the opening of the gate into a single word, he seizes on one half of that pivot and turns it into a grievance of his own. The closing word means a wretched thing, giving back the very note of lament she had used. He admits the fault and yet insists that it was he who was kept waiting, and in that lies the character of the reply.

Author

Fujiwara no Kaneie

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other