Waga yado no nageki no shita wa iro fukaku utsuroinikeri nagame furu ma ni

English Translation

The lower leaves of
the sighing wood at my house
have deepened in hue
and turned, while the long rains fell
and I gazed the days away.

Meaning

The lower leaves of the sighing wood at my house have deepened and changed color, while the long rains fell and I gazed the days away.

Commentary

9 The Wild Rice Grass; Kaneie Grows Distant from the Other House

After the other lady had gone, the author's days became, as she had foreseen, a matter of lying down and rising alone. There was nothing in her circumstances out of the ordinary; only Kaneie's heart would not answer to her wishes, and that was the hardship. Hearing that his visits to the other house too had ceased, and since letters passed between them, she sent a poem there around the third or fourth of the fifth month, and an answer came. In the sixth month the long rains fell heavily from the first of the month, and gazing out she spoke a poem to herself. The seventh month came, and while she was still turning over whether it might not be better for the visits to stop altogether than to have him come so rarely, there was a day when Kaneie appeared. He said nothing and seemed at a loss. When one of her people happened to mention the matter of the lower leaves, he heard it and composed a poem. So his visits did not cease, and yet no night brought any easing of the heart; he came to a house growing more neglected, was out of temper, and sometimes turned back at once. A neighbor who knew how things stood addressed a poem to him as he was leaving, and they teased one another over it. About that time he stayed away particularly long, and after some ten days a letter came. The author untied the small bow's arrow it spoke of, took it down, and sent a poem with it. Then, in the ninth month, hearing that the visits to the house where she knew there were many children had ceased entirely, she felt for them the more and wrote, and a particularly warm reply came. Kaneie could not refuse her altogether and showed himself from time to time, and winter came on. Lying down and rising she had only the little child to play with, and a line of old verse came unbidden to her lips. The year turned, and in spring Kaneie left behind a letter he had been carrying about to read, and sent a woman to fetch it. The author wrote a poem on the paper in which she wrapped it back. A reply came by return, and when the messenger came again she sent one more.
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 one called the house of long standing, and elsewhere the house where there are said to be many children, is the woman Kaneie had long visited; the text gives no name.
It is early in the sixth month of the tenth year of Tenryaku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
As the long rains fell heavily from the beginning of the month, she gazed outside and spoke this poem to herself, sending it to no one.
The lower leaves of this poem come up again later, mentioned in passing by one of her people, and Kaneie, hearing it, answers with "Ori narade irotsukinikeru momijiba wa toki ni aite zo iro masarikeru."

The opening fixes the scene at her own house. The second line joins the word for sighing, which also means wood cast down, to the lower leaves of that wood. The third line means deep in color and leads into the fourth. The verb there means both that leaves change color and that a person's heart changes, so that the turning of the lower leaves is itself Kaneie's turning. In the closing line the word for gazing also means the long rains, and the verb means both to fall and to pass, so that the time of continuing rain and the time of sinking into thought sound together. A pivot word is set in the fourth line and another in the fifth, and scene and feeling are laid over each other a word at a time. That it is recorded as something said to herself, meant for no one's eyes, shows plainly how solitary the author's life had become in this period.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other