Kimi to ware nao shiraito no ikani shite ukifushi nakute taemu to zo omou

English Translation

You and I are still
like white thread: how, I wonder,
might we come at last
to our ending without one
bitter knot along the way?

Meaning

You and I are white thread still: how might we come to our ending without a single bitter knot along the way?

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.
It came as the third of the exchanges, in answer to Kaneie's claim that he had leisure at least for a glimpse or two. With the poem went a note to the effect that he had indeed cut the two and three eyes down very far, and that he was stopping because the words were ill-omened.
Kaneie answered with "Yo o fu tomo chigiri okiteshi naka yori wa itodo yuyushiki koto mo miyuramu," and the narrative closes the thread exchange with a word of humble report.

The opening sets the two of them side by side and leads into the white thread of the second line — thread without knots, standing for a relation with nothing caught in it. The third line means: by what means. The word in the fourth line means both a knot in thread and a bitter turn of feeling, and the poem hangs on it. The close speaks of coming to an end, laying the breaking of thread over the ending of an acquaintance: even if it must end some day, let it end with no ugly knot in it. The verb for ending is, however, an ill-omened word, and the Prince himself adds after the poem that he has cut the count of eyes very short and is stopping on account of the ill omen. Having carried the banter through three exchanges, he makes a show of checking his own words and breaking off.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other