Omou chō waga koto no ha o adabito no shigeru nageki ni soete uramu na

English Translation

Do not take these words
of mine, that say I love her,
and bind them up with
the thickening sighs of one
who is faithless, and hate them.

Meaning

Do not gather up my words, which say that I love her, together with the thickening sighs of a faithless man, and resent them too.

Commentary

8 The Peach Festival and the Parting from Her Sister

The year turned and the third month came. Peach blossoms and the rest had no doubt been made ready, but though she waited, Kaneie did not appear; and the other lady, who was usually never away from her side, did not come that day either. On the morning of the fourth they all appeared together, and saying that the things she had waited over since the night before were better used than left, they brought out this and that. When the flowers she had prepared with such care were broken off and set out from within, there was written on them, in the hand of one who could not keep her composure, a poem jotted down as if in idle practice. Kaneie, seeing her try to hide it, snatched it up and made his reply. The other lady, hearing this, put into a poem of her own the reason she had stayed away. From this time Kaneie made no secret of his visits to the woman of Machi no Kōji, going openly and on purpose. Once there had been at least some care not to rouse the author's suspicions; now there was nothing to be done, and it was wretched. Moreover, while she was still watching the other lady come and go, they said it was time she moved somewhere easier, and took her away. The author, left behind, felt lonelier still, and the thought that she would hardly see her face again made her truly sad, so that as the carriage was drawn up she sent her a poem. It was the man who answered.
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. The other lady is a sister of the author, whom the text names by that designation alone. The woman of Machi no Kōji likewise appears under that name only, her family never disclosed.
It is the day in the tenth year of Tenryaku when the other lady moved away, and the place is the carriage porch of the author's dwelling.
The author had sent her poem to the departing lady, and it was answered not by her but by the man who had come to fetch her.
With this exchange the other lady moves away, and the author's days become a matter of lying down and rising alone. In time she hears that Kaneie's visits to the other house have also ceased, and the account moves to "Soko ni sae karu to iu naru makomogusa ikanaru sawa ni ne o todomuramu."

He takes back her sighing and her thickening just as they stood. The opening means the words that say one loves, referring to his own heart. The word for words in the second line contains the word for a leaf, and by that single syllable the poem enters the same world of tree imagery as her cast-down wood and her thicket. The third line means a fickle, faithless person, and here it points at Kaneie. The fourth receives her line about sighs growing ever thicker and names Kaneie as the one who caused them. The close is a prohibition: do not gather my words in with those and hate them too. Speaking as the man who is taking the lady away, he pleads that the object of her resentment lies elsewhere; and by answering in the departing lady's place, he suggests as well that the parting of the sisters is not of their own choosing.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other