Naku bakari arite koso are natsuhiki no itoma ya wa naki hitome futame ni

English Translation

There is nothing left
for me but weeping; summer-drawn
thread — is there really
no gap in it, no leisure
for one eye, two, with you?

Meaning

There is nothing left me but weeping. Summer-drawn thread: is there truly no gap in it, no leisure for one glimpse of you, or two?

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 author's dwelling and the Prince's residence.
It answers the Prince's charge that the time runs out while Kaneie goes twisting his way from one eye to the next.
The Prince pressed on with "Kimi to ware nao shiraito no ikani shite ukifushi nakute taemu to zo omou," so that three exchanges on thread were made in all.

He takes back the summer-drawn thread and the counted eyes. The first two lines say that there is nothing left him but weeping — the man reproached begins by making a show of grief, and the emphatic particle strengthens it. The third line resets the other's word for thread and leads into the fourth. That word means leisure and at the same time the gap between one thread and the next, and the poem turns on it. What follows is rhetorical in force: it is not that he has no leisure. The close reduces the other's two and three eyes to one and two, so that he claims to have time enough at least for a glimpse or two. By shrinking the count within the same imagery of thread, he turns the charge into a plea that the least free moment would bring him — the manipulation of number inside a fixed set of images is the poem's ingenuity.

Author

Fujiwara no Kaneie

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other