Ura mo naku fumi yaru ato o watatsuumi no shio no hiru ma mo nani ni ka wa semu

English Translation

These tracks I send you,
letters written with no fold
of concealment — what
use is there in waiting out
the great sea's ebbing tide?

Meaning

These tracks of mine, letters sent with nothing folded away in them — what use is there in waiting for the great sea's tide to ebb?

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.
It answers her reply that she would wait for the tide to fall, and it closes the exchanges of this section.
After this poem the author asks for the plume grass from the Prince's grounds, and the account moves on to "Kimi ga kono machi no minami ni tomi ni osoki haru ni wa ima zo tazune maireru."

He takes back her bay, her tracks and her ebbing tide, all of them. The opening means without any fold in the heart, without reserve, drawing the word for bay across into its other sense of the inward side. In the second line the word for sending on foot also means a letter, and the word for tracks means both footprints and a hand of writing, so that the phrase means the hand of letters he sends with nothing concealed. The third line names the open sea, widening the tidal scene she had raised into something far larger. The fourth receives her waiting for the ebb and proposes, absurdly, the patience of waiting out the tide of the great sea. The close is rhetorical: what use would it be — none at all. Since he writes with nothing hidden, he pleads, she should read the letter now and not wait for any tide. By restating her tide as a tide no one could outwait, he shuts off that line of reply, and so brings the three rounds of the shore-plover exchange to a close.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other