Fujigoromo nagasu namida no kawamizu wa kishi ni mo masaru mono ni zo arikeru

English Translation

The river of tears
that carries the mourning robe
away runs higher
than its banks — higher than when
I wore that robe upon me.

Meaning

The river of tears that carries the mourning robe away runs higher than its banks — higher than in the days when I wore it.

Commentary

18 The First Anniversary of Her Mother's Death

So, in her unsettled way, she passed the autumn and the winter. In the same house there lived a brother of hers and a woman who seemed to be an aunt. She thought of that woman as a parent, and yet she still longed for the past and wept the nights through. The year turned to the second of Kōhō, and when spring and summer had passed it was time for the final rite, which this once was held at that same mountain temple. Remembering how it had been, she found it more painful still. When the officiant began by saying that he had not come there merely out of a wish to seek the autumn hills — that it was rather to expound the meaning of the sutra in the very place where the dead had closed her eyes — she could take in nothing more, and remembered nothing of what followed. When all that had to be done was finished, they returned. The mourning was then to be put off, and while the dove-gray garments, down to the fans, were being purified, a poem came into her mind; but it made her weep so bitterly that she said nothing of it to anyone. When the memorial days were over and she was as idle as ever, she wiped the koto and ran her hand over it, not so much playing as touching it, and thinking how the season of restraint was past, and how sad and fleeting it all was — and then a poem came from the other side of the house. There was nothing remarkable in it, but thinking of what it meant she wept the more, and made her reply.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The one who died is her mother, whose name the diary does not give. In the same house lived a brother of hers and a woman who seemed to be an aunt, whom the author regarded as a parent. Who it was that sent the poem from the other side is not stated in the text.
It is the second year of Kōhō, after the return from the anniversary rite at the mountain temple, and the place is the author's dwelling.
The rite was over and they had come home; the mourning was to be put off, and while the dove-gray garments and even the fans were being purified, this poem came into her mind.
The narrative says that the thought made her weep so bitterly that she said nothing of it to anyone. It is a poem that stayed within her and was never sent.

The garment of the opening is the robe of mourning, named for the coarse wisteria fiber of which it was woven. The verb in the second line describes the actual rite of letting the mourning robe go into the water, and carries at the same time the shedding of tears, so that it passes into the river of the phrase that follows. The third line raises the figure of the river, and the fourth turns on a word that means the bank of a river and also the wearing of a garment; the poem hangs on it. The picture of water running over its banks and the feeling that the tears exceed even those of the days when she wore the robe are held in that one word. The close is bound by an emphatic particle and states the realization outright. That grief should come to its height on the very day the mourning ends is a paradox caught by laying the water of the purification over the water of weeping; and the narrative's note that she never showed it to anyone tells much about the poem's character.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other