Midareito no tsukasa hitotsu ni narite shimo kuru koto no nado taenitaruramu

English Translation

As one reels tangled
thread — now that our office has
become one office,
how is it that your coming,
your reeling in, has ceased?

Meaning

As one reels tangled thread: now that we belong to a single office, how has it come about that your reeling in — your coming — has stopped?

Commentary

14 Kaneie's Friendship with Prince Akiakira

On the fifth of the seventh month, while the author was shut in for a long period of abstinence, word came from Kaneie that the day after next would be the meeting slope. She answered with a poem, and — whether he thought the tone had altered — Kaneie seemed to take a little more notice of her, and the months went by so. The woman of Machi no Kōji, whom she had found insufferable, was now, she heard, a laughing-stock, and that eased her mind. As for what had gone before, there was nothing to be done: hard as it was, it must be the poverty of her own destiny, she told herself, turning the matter over this way and that as the time passed. Kaneie, after his years as lesser counselor, rose to the fourth rank, left the privy chamber, and at the appointments received an office not to his liking. He seemed to find the world thoroughly distasteful, and since he went nowhere but on his rounds of visits, he would spend two or three days quite at leisure. About that time a poem came from the Prince who was head of that unwelcome office, and Kaneie answered it; three exchanges passed between them on the figure of thread. Later, from about the twentieth of the fifth month, the author moved to the place she had used before in order to avoid a period of mourning, and the Prince had moved to a house separated from hers by only a fence. Rain fell heavily into the sixth month, and everyone must have been shut in by it; her own lodging being a poor one, there was a commotion over the leaking roof, and a poem came from the Prince. Exchanges on the long rains and the muddy road of love followed, and after them others on the pink and the shore plover.
Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke, and by this time had passed his years as lesser counselor and risen to the fourth rank; he would rise to be regent and chancellor. The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The Prince is the head of the office in which Kaneie served as deputy; the text gives no name, and he is taken to be Prince Akiakira. The woman of Machi no Kōji likewise appears under that name only.
It is the Ōwa era, and the places are the Prince's residence and the author's dwelling.
Kaneie had taken an office not to his liking and was spending his days at leisure without going out, when this poem came from the Prince who headed that office.
Kaneie answered with "Tayu to ieba ito zo kanashiki kimi ni yori onaji tsukasa ni kuru kai mo naku," and three exchanges on the figure of thread followed.

The opening, on reeling tangled thread, serves to lead into the verb near the close. The word in the second line means an office of state and a post within it, but set in a scene of thread it also sounds the sense of something that gathers strands together. What follows means: now that we have come to be of one office — that is, head and deputy in the same bureau. The verb in the fourth line means both to reel thread and for a person to come, and the poem turns on it. The close asks how it can have ceased, leaving the question in the conjectural mood. Since they now share an office he ought to come the more often, and instead has come less: a superior chiding a subordinate, in the form of a joke bound together by the imagery of thread. Every exchange that follows is carried on within that same imagery.

Source

Kagero Nikki

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