Mizu masari ura mo nagisa no koro nareba chidori no ato o fumi wa madou ka

English Translation

The waters have risen
and it is the season when
bay and shore are one:
is that why the letter, treading
the plover's tracks, goes astray?

Meaning

The waters have risen, and it is the season when bay and shore are indistinguishable: is that why the letter, treading the plover's tracks, loses its 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 about the sixth month, 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.
Two days after the poem about the pink, Kaneie appeared. 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 composed this.
With the poem went a line to the effect that so he had seen it, that her resentment was not to be wondered at, and asking whether it was true that she had written in her own person — and it was written in a woman's hand. The author notes that a man's hand would not do for the reply, so that the poem which follows, "Uragakure miru koto kataki ato naraba shiohi o matamu karaki waza kana," is to be understood as her own.

The opening names the rising of the water in the long rains, and leads into the second line. The word for bay also carries the sense of the heart, so that a flood in which bay and shore can no longer be told apart is laid over an unsettled mind. The third line gives the season as the reason and hands on to what follows. The word for tracks means both a bird's footprints and a hand of writing, and the word in the closing line means both treading and a letter; between them, the picture of footprints on a shore erased by water falls exactly over the failure of any message to arrive. The close asks whether that is why it loses its way. Told that no word has come, he answers that the water has risen and the tracks cannot be seen. This conceit of the shore plover follows the same usage as the poem from the time of the marriage, "Hamachidori ato mo nagisa ni fumi mireba ware o kosu nami uchi yaketsuramu," and the later "Fumi okishi ura mo kokoro mo aretareba ato o todomenu chidori narikeri" — a pattern to which the diary returns again and again.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other