Te furene to hana wa sakari ni narinikeri todome okikeru tsuyu ni kakarite

English Translation

No hand has touched them,
and yet the flowers have come
into their full bloom,
living on the dew that she
left behind her when she went.

Meaning

No hand has touched them, and yet the flowers have come into full bloom — living still on the dew she left behind her.

Commentary

17 The Death of Her Mother

Her mother had died, and more than ten days had passed in the mountain temple. Hearing the monks talking among themselves between the invocations, she caught this: that there is a place where the dead may be seen quite plainly; that if one goes near they vanish, but from a distance they are visible; and that it lies in some province or other and is called the Isle of Mimiraku. Listening to them say it, one after another, she longed to know more, and in her grief a poem rose to her lips. Her brother, hearing it, answered her through his tears. Meanwhile Kaneie only looked in without dismounting and asked her people how she did, and she had no heart for anything. At length the day came for them all to leave the temple. When they had come there she had carried her mother, who lay against her knees, hoping only to make her comfortable, and there had been a hope in her that sustained her; now she rode back in perfect ease, absurdly at leisure, and the whole road was misery. Getting down and looking about her was misery past speaking. The plants she and her mother had gone out together to have tended had been left to themselves since the illness began, and had run wild and were blooming in every color. Since the necessary arrangements were all divided among the others, she had nothing to do but sit in idleness and brood, and only a line of old verse kept coming to her lips. Then she composed a poem. Kaneie, thinking perhaps how forlorn she seemed, came more often than before. When something was sent to the temple, she wrote a poem to go with a surplice. And the elder brother of the man who received that surplice was a monk too, one on whose prayers she had relied; hearing that he had suddenly died, she wondered what his brother must feel, and was herself much grieved. Troubled that those she leaned upon should go this way, she sent condolences again and again. For reasons of his own the man had been in service at Unrin'in. When the forty-nine days were over she sent him a poem. So, in the wretchedness of her own heart, her thoughts went out over field and mountain alike.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The one who died is her mother, whose name the diary does not give. The brother is named in the text by that word alone. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke, and would rise to be regent and chancellor. The recipient of the surplice was a monk of the temple; his elder brother was also a monk, in service at Unrin'in.
It is the day of the return from the mountain temple to the capital in the first year of Kōhō, and the place is the house where she had lived with her mother.
The plants she and her mother had gone out together to have tended had been left untended since the illness began; seeing them run wild and blooming in every color, she composed this. The narrative adds that since the necessary arrangements were all divided among the others, she had nothing to do but sit brooding, with only a line of old verse coming to her lips.
After this poem Kaneie, thinking perhaps how forlorn she seemed, came more often than before. The account then moves to the sending of a surplice to the temple, and "Hachisuba no tama to naruramu musubu ni mo sode nure masaru kesa no tsuyu kana."

The opening means that no hand has touched them, saying that the garden has lost the one who tended it. The second and third lines say that the flowers are nevertheless at their height, the auxiliary marking a realization that comes unlooked for. That the people should be gone while the plants alone keep their season faithfully is itself the grief, carried entirely by the contrast. The fourth line means: left behind when she went, the subject being her dead mother. The dew of the close is the dew that settles on grass and flower, and at the same time what her mother left behind her, and the author's own tears. To say that the flowers are at their height because of the dew her mother left is to make the garden itself stand as what remains of her. The pattern of lamenting over a neglected garden appeared before, in "Nado kakaru nageki wa shigesa masaritsutsu hito nomi kakaru yado to naruramu," but where that reflected the ruin of a marriage, here it is turned toward what a dead woman has left.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other