Yo to tomo ni katsu miru hito no koiji o mo hosu yo araji to omoi koso yare

English Translation

For one who sees you
always, day in and day out,
I think the miry
road of love can have no hour
in which it might dry again.

Meaning

For those who see each other day in and day out, I imagine the miry road of love can have no hour in which to dry.

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.
Having asked who could walk love's miry road and not be soaked, the Prince carries the same word further in this poem.
A reply went back to him, "Shika mo inu kimi wa nururamu tsune ni sumu tokoro ni wa mata koiji dani nashi," and afterward the two of them looked over the Prince's letter together.

He carries on the word from his own previous poem. The opening means always, without interval. The second line means those who are constantly in one another's sight, that is, Kaneie and the author, living beyond a single fence. The third line is the word that means mud and also the road of love, the pivot carried over from the poem before. The fourth says there can be no hour for drying, laying the miry road left by long rain over a continual soaking in love. The close is bound by an emphatic particle and states the thought outright. The content amounts to teasing the household next door — your road of love can hardly have a moment to dry — and the banter that began with a leaking roof is turned here upon the marriage itself. It is the situation, everyone shut in by rain with nothing to do, that licenses such familiarity.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other