Omoiki ya kumo no hayashi ni uchisutete sora no keburi ni tatamu mono to wa

English Translation

Did I ever think
that he would be left behind
in that wood of cloud,
and rise as smoke into the
sky above it? I did not.

Meaning

Did I ever think that he would be left behind in that wood of cloud, and rise as smoke into the sky above it? I never did.

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 first year of Kōhō, after the forty-nine days for the dead monk, and the place is Unrin'in.
The elder brother of the man who received the surplice, a monk on whose prayers she had relied, had died suddenly. Wondering what the surviving brother must feel, and much grieved herself, she had sent condolences again and again; and when the forty-nine days were over she sent this poem.
The narrative closes the section by saying that in the wretchedness of her own heart her thoughts went out over field and mountain alike.

The opening is rhetorical in force — did she ever think it? she did not — and begins the poem from the shock of a sudden death. The second line contains the name of the temple where the dead monk had served, taking it directly into the scene; the two words cloud and wood also call up of themselves the sky and the smoke that follow, and the phrase is the pivot of the whole. The third line means: left behind, spoken from the position of the brother who remains. The fourth names the smoke of the pyre, setting the sky against the wood of cloud so that the smoke is seen rising out of that wood. The close ends on a noun with what should follow left unsaid, turning the poem back to the disbelief of its first line and closing the circle. Having just lost her mother, the author lays over that loss the death of a monk she had relied on; and as the narrative says in closing, in the wretchedness of her heart her thoughts went out over field and mountain — the grief of this section widening here to take in the whole of the deaths around her.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other