Omoiizuru toki mo araji to omoedomo ya to iu ni koso odorokarenuru

English Translation

I had thought there was
no hour when you would recall
me; and yet at that
one cry of yours — an arrow,
a call — I was startled awake.

Meaning

I had thought there would be no hour when you remembered me; and yet at that single cry — an arrow, a summons — I was startled awake.

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 autumn in the tenth year of Tenryaku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
She had been thinking that it must all be over, and that nothing was left even to remember him by, when after some ten days a letter came from Kaneie. Among other things it asked her to take down the small bow's arrow tied to the pillar of the curtained dais. Thinking that this, then, was what remained to remember him by, she untied the arrow, took it down, and sent it with this poem.
After sending the arrow with this poem, in the ninth month she hears that his visits to the house where there are said to be many children have ceased as well, and sends "Fuku kaze ni tsukete mo towamu sasagani no kayoishi michi wa sora ni tayu tomo."

The first three lines mean that she had supposed there would never be an hour when he remembered her, carrying straight into verse the narrative's own lament that nothing was left even as a token. In the fourth line the single syllable is at once the arrow named in his letter and a cry by which one calls out to a person, and the whole poem hangs upon it. A request to fetch a piece of equipment is heard, in the poem, as a voice calling to her. The close means to be startled into awareness, and the emphatic particle with its resolving form deepens the sense of the unexpected. The fact of the matter is that what reached her, when she believed herself forgotten, was not a word of longing but an errand about a piece of gear; and to sing of it as though it were a joy leaves an ironic undertone behind.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other