Ikani semu yama no ha ni dani todomarade kokoro mo sora ni idemu tsuki o ba

English Translation

What am I to do
with a moon that will not stay
even on the ridge,
but goes out, and goes out with
its heart already elsewhere?

Meaning

What am I to do with a moon that will not rest even on the ridge, but rises away with its heart already elsewhere?

Commentary

11 Kaneie's Visits Return

In the seventh month, about the time of the wrestling festival, Kaneie sent over a set of old robes and a set of new ones, wrapped up, asking that they be made up for him. The sight of them made the author's head swim. An old-fashioned member of the household thought it a pity, but the more spirited ones gathered and settled it among themselves — the thing was absurd, and better to be spoken ill of for failing to do it — and sent the bundles back. Sure enough, word came that he was having them made up here and there about the town. On his side too the refusal must have seemed very unkind, for more than twenty days passed without any word. Then at some point a letter came, saying that he would like to come but felt too awkward, and that if there were some definite occasion he might venture, timidly. She meant to send no answer, but the household said it was too unkind, and so she sent a poem. A reply came by return, and when the messenger came again she sent another; and Kaneie, smoothing the matter over in words, appeared once more. Gazing out at the garden flowers blooming in their various colors, they exchanged poems that were, on both sides, reproaches. Then, late in the night, when the moon of the twentieth rose above the ridge and he showed signs of leaving, the author composed a poem, and Kaneie answered it and stayed. Afterward there was something like a typhoon, and two days later he came. When the author remarked that an ordinary man would have asked how she had fared in the wind the other day, he seemed to think she had a point, and without any fuss composed a poem. Four poems passed between them, and the author, in no mood to be beaten, answered him back. Perhaps people judged that she was entitled to say as much. Then again, about the tenth month, he made to go out on some business he said could not be put off; the rain was more than could be called a passing shower, and yet he still meant to go, and in her astonishment a poem came to her lips.
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 old-fashioned person who speaks about the robes is an elderly gentlewoman of conservative views.
It is late at night in the seventh month of the first year of Tentoku, about the time of the wrestling festival, and the place is the author's dwelling.
The night wore on in his usual unconcerned manner, and as the moon of the twentieth rose above the ridge he showed signs of leaving. Something in her face must have shown that she thought he need not go on such a night, for he said that if there were any reason for him to stay — and since she could not see that there was, she composed this poem.
The poem kept him there. The exchanges of the section continue, and in time the account moves on to "Koto no ha wa chiri mo ya suru to tomeokite kyō wa mikara mo tou ni ya wa aranu" and what follows.

The opening begins the poem from despair: what is to be done. The second line names the ridge over which the moon rises, and its particle expresses the smallest of wishes — if only there, at least. The third means without staying, laying the moon's departure from the ridge into the open sky over Kaneie's departure from the house. In the fourth line the word for sky is at once the night sky and the state of a mind gone absent, a word used again and again in this diary since the morning poem "Shinonome ni okikeru sora ni omōede ayashiku tsuyu to kiekaeritsuru." The close ends on a noun, leaving unsaid whatever should have followed, so that the helplessness stands as it is. She makes the departing man a moon and shows only her grief, without a word to hold him back — and it was this poem, in the event, that kept him.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other