Shika mo inu kimi wa nururamu tsune ni sumu tokoro ni wa mata koiji dani nashi

English Translation

You who never sit
still are the one who must be
soaked; here, in a house
where one stays put, there is not
even a road of love to walk.

Meaning

It is you, who never sit still, who must be the one soaked through. In a house where one simply stays put there is not even a road of love to walk.

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 temporary lodging to which the author moved to avoid the mourning, and the Prince's house beyond a single fence.
It went back to the Prince in answer to his suggestion that the road of love of so close a couple could have no time to dry. The narrative does not say who composed it; it records only that, saying what an outrageous manner His Highness had, the two of them looked over his letter together.
After this exchange, on a day when Kaneie had gone off in a break in the rain to his usual house of call, the Prince sent "Tokonatsu ni koishiki koto ya nagusamu to kimi ga kakiho ni oru to shirazu ya."

The poem takes back his soaking and his road of love. The opening means one who never settles in one place, pointing at a man forever out and about. The verb in the second line means both to be wet and to lie down to sleep, so that in saying it is he who must be soaked the poem also glances at the bedchamber. The third and fourth lines mean: in this house, where one simply stays. The close declares that there is not even a road of love here — no mud and no love's path either, and so no way of getting wet at all. Told that their road could have no time to dry, the answer denies that any such road exists, pushing the Prince's joke straight back; and beneath it there remains a note of self-mockery, that nothing of the kind goes on in this house.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other