Shirakawa no seki no sekeba ya komauku te amata no hi o ba hikiwataritsuru

English Translation

Is it the barrier
at Shirakawa that holds
me back? The going
was hard, and I have led the days
across, so many of them.

Meaning

Is it the barrier at Shirakawa that holds me back? The going was hard, and I have led so many days across it.

Commentary

13 The Exchange of Long Poems

So again there was no night that brought any easing of the heart, and she went on grieving. People who liked to seem knowing would say that a woman still young ought not to go on like this; but Kaneie himself was entirely unruffled, with no notion that any fault might be his, and carried himself as though there were nothing to answer for, so that nothing could be done. The things she had to say grew thicker and thicker, and while she was casting about for some means of setting them out to him point by point, some disagreeable thing would occur, her heart would go cold, and she would find she could not speak at all. Even so, she resolved that she would write it out at length and let him see it, and composed a long poem. The answer came in a long poem too. Afterward a messenger came, and she sent a short poem; Kaneie, whatever he made of it, replied by return, and the exchange went on, ending in four poems built on the figure of a horse.
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. Her father Tomoyasu was at this time in Mutsu as its governor.
It is about winter in the first year of Tentoku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
It answers her poem about relying on nothing but a thin rope that has not yet broken, and is the last of the section.
With this exchange the section closes. The account then moves to his friendship with Prince Akiakira and the exchange that begins "Ama no kawa nanuka o chigiru kokoro araba hoshiai bakari no kage o miyo to ya."

The first two lines mean that the barrier at Shirakawa holds him back, and the name of the barrier and the verb for blocking sound against one another from the same root. Shirakawa was the gateway into Mutsu and a place of long poetic standing; her post station at the far end of the road is answered here with another place name from the same northern route. The third line means that the going was hard, sounding within itself the word for a colt, and it receives her own line about growing ever more reluctant to come. The fourth means so many days. The close means both to lead a horse across and to draw the days out in passing, so that one word carries the horse imagery and the passage of time together. Explaining his long absences as the work of a barrier that blocked the road, he keeps himself on the horse's side of the figure through all four poems and never once reaches for a word of apology. That a sequence begun with a long poem should close on nothing but place names and horse imagery says a good deal about the character of these exchanges.

Author

Fujiwara no Kaneie

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other