Tokonatsu ni koishiki koto ya nagusamu to kimi ga kakiho ni oru to shirazu ya

English Translation

Wondering whether
the pink might comfort me in
my longing, I break
a stem at your own hedgerow —
and do you not know of it?

Meaning

Wondering whether the pink might comfort my longing, I break a stem of it at your own hedge — and do you not know?

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 a break in the rain about the sixth month, 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.
On a day when Kaneie had gone off in a break in the rain to his usual house of call, a letter came from the Prince as usual. Told that Kaneie was not there, he insisted all the same, and when the letter was brought in it held this poem, with a line saying that since it was of no use he would go home again.
Two days later Kaneie appeared, and when he was shown the letter he said that too much time had passed and it would not do; word was sent that there had simply been no message of late, whereupon the Prince sent "Mizu masari ura mo nagisa no koro nareba chidori no ato o fumi wa madou ka."

The flower named in the opening is the pink, whose name also contains the word for a sleeping place; it is called so because it blooms all summer long, and the sense of what is perpetual and the sense of a shared bed work together in it. The second line means: wondering whether longing might be eased, the particle lending the note of doubt. The fourth line means: at the hedge of your own house. The circumstance that he had moved next door, with a single fence between, becomes the scene of the poem itself, and one may read it as composed while actually breaking off a flower at that hedge. The close asks whether she does not know of it, announcing his presence though he knew the master was away. Taken together with the line he added, that since it was of no use he would go home, the whole gives the picture of a man snapping a flower at an empty house and turning back. It arrived on a day when Kaneie was out, and it marks the point at which the exchanges of this section begin to be addressed to the author directly rather than through her husband.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other