Moshio yaku keburi no sora ni tachinuru wa fusube ya shitsuru kuyuru omoi ni

English Translation

That smoke of burning
seaweed for salt, risen up
into the sky — was
it smoked out of you by some
smouldering fire of regret?

Meaning

That smoke of seaweed burning for salt, risen into the sky — was it smoked out of you by some smouldering fire of regret?

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 between summer and autumn in the tenth year of Tenryaku, and the place is the author's dwelling and its immediate neighborhood.
On days when Kaneie went off out of temper without staying, a neighbor who knew how things stood addressed this poem to him as he was leaving.
The narrative goes on to say that they smoked one another out, meddling as they went. About that time Kaneie stayed away particularly long, and when a letter came after some ten days, the account moves to "Omoiizuru toki mo araji to omoedomo ya to iu ni koso odorokarenuru."

The smoke of the opening lines is that raised in burning seaweed steeped in seawater to make salt, long used in poetry for the smouldering of desire. The third line states that the smoke has actually risen, and the rest of the poem asks why. The verb in the fourth line means to smoke a thing and also to be jealous, and it is the point on which the poem turns; the interrogative particle asks whether jealousy is at work. In the close, the verb for smouldering also means to regret, and the word for thinking contains the word for fire. Salt-burning, smoke, smoking, smouldering and fire weave the whole poem out of a single family of terms. Coming amid the strained exchanges of the principals, this teasing voice from next door marks the point where the atmosphere of the scene shifts.

Source

Kagero Nikki

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