Ame no shita sawagu kokoro mo ōmizu ni tare mo koiji ni nurezarame ya wa

English Translation

Under all heaven
the restless heart too rises
to a flood; and who
shall walk the miry road of
love and not be soaked by it?

Meaning

Under all heaven the restless heart itself has risen to a flood; and who shall walk the miry road of love and not be soaked?

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 from about the twentieth of the fifth month into the sixth, and the places are the Prince's house beyond a single fence and the temporary lodging to which the author moved to avoid the mourning.
It answers the author's retort that in a season of long rain no one who lives in the world can be at ease.
From here the exchange is carried on around the road of love, and afterward on the pink and the shore plover.

He takes her everywhere and her one who passes his days in the world, and widens the compass further. The opening names all under heaven, pushing her everywhere to its furthest extent. The second line speaks of a heart in commotion, laying the disturbance over the leaking roof and the disturbance within a person one upon the other. The third names a flood, so that the long rain rising into a deluge measures at the same time the size of that inward commotion. The word in the fourth line means mud and also the road of love, and on it the poem turns: the miry road left by long rain, and the difficulty of one who has set foot on love's path, work together. The close is rhetorical in force — who could walk it and not be soaked? The banter, which began with a leaking roof, moves here to the subject of love, and the exchanges that follow are built around that word.

Source

Kagero Nikki

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