Fumi okishi ura mo kokoro mo aretareba ato o todomenu chidori narikeri

English Translation

The shore where you set
your foot, and my heart as well,
have gone to ruin —
so you were, after all, a
plover that leaves no traces.

Meaning

The shore where you once trod, and my heart with it, have gone to ruin: you were, then, a plover that leaves no trace behind.

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 spring in the first year of Tentoku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
Kaneie had left behind a letter he was carrying about to read, and sent a woman to fetch it. This poem was written on the paper in which she wrapped it back.
Kaneie answered promptly and with some address: "Kokoro ari to fumi kaesu tomo hamachidori ura ni nomi koso ato wa todomeme." When the messenger came once more, the author returned a further poem, "Hamachidori ato no tomari o tazunu tote yukue mo shiranu urami o ya semu."

The word in the opening means both treading on sand and a letter, so that the forgotten letter is laid directly over the plover's footprints. The word in the second line is at once a bay on the shore and, in old usage, the heart itself, and so names scene and feeling together in a single term. What follows means that both have fallen into ruin, the desolation of the shore and the desolation of her own heart at once. The word for traces in the fourth line means both a bird's footprints and a hand of writing, a usage running back to the scene of the marriage itself, "Hamachidori ato mo nagisa ni fumi mireba ware o kosu nami uchi yaketsuramu." The close adds to a noun the auxiliary of realization, so that she seems to grasp only now that he was a bird which leaves nothing behind. The very act of forgetting a letter and sending for it is identified as the habit of a bird that keeps no traces.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other