Itsushika mo itsushika mo to zo machiwataru mori no koma yori hikari mimu ma o

English Translation

When, oh when, I say,
and say again, and go on
waiting all this while —
waiting for the hour I see
light through the trees of the grove.

Meaning

When, oh when, I say, and say again, and go on waiting — waiting for the hour when I shall see light through the trees of the grove.

Commentary

23 Poems Offered at Inari and Kamo

The ninth month came, and thinking that the world would be at its most beautiful, that she should like to go on a pilgrimage somewhere and lay before the god the frailty of her own situation, she set out very quietly to a certain place. On a single sheaf of offerings she wrote these poems: one for the lower shrine, one for the middle, one for the last. Then, at the end of the same month, she went in the same manner to another place, this time with two sheaves: two poems for the lower shrine and two for the upper. Such were the things she muttered where no god could hear them.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The place she visited in secret is understood to be Inari at Fushimi, since one of the poems names Mount Inari. The other place, visited at the end of the same month, is understood to be the Kamo shrines, since the poems speak of the purification stream and the sacred grove. The text names neither shrine, calling them only the lower, the middle and the last, and the lower and the upper.
It is the end of the ninth month of the third year of Kōhō, and the place is the upper shrine of the other sanctuary visited in the same quiet way.
After the two poems for the lower shrine, this is the first of the two written for the upper.
She wrote a second poem for the same upper shrine, "Yūdasuki musubōretsutsu nageku koto taenaba kami no shirushi to omowamu," and the narrative closes by saying that these were things she muttered where no god could hear them.

The doubled phrase of the first two lines means when, oh when, and by repeating the same words it puts the length of the waiting and the impatience of it directly into sound. The third line means to go on waiting, not for a moment but through years. The word in the fourth line means the space between trees, the gaps in the grove — here the grove of the upper shrine's precinct, so that the place she has climbed to from the lower shrine becomes the language of the poem. The close names the hour when she will see the light, and the noun ending leaves the object of the waiting standing there. The light is the sunlight through the branches, and at the same time the god's sign and the brightness that ought one day to fall on her own life. Where the poem for the lower shrine spoke of a stream that would not run, this one turns toward light through the trees, so that the four poems of the two shrines are built as a pair.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other