Yado mireba yomogi no kado mo sashinagara aru beki mono to omoikemu ya zo

English Translation

Looking at the house,
I see the gate shut fast, and
mugwort over it.
Could she ever have thought that
things would come to stand so?

Meaning

Looking at the house, I see the gate shut fast and choked with mugwort. Could she ever have thought that things would come to stand so?

Commentary

37 The Long Poem to the Lady of the Exiled Minister

Since she went on much the same, they kept the festivals and purifications without ceremony, doing a little at a time; and toward the end of the sixth month, when she was beginning to have some sense of things again, she heard that the wife of the exiled Minister had taken vows as a nun. She was deeply sorry for her. Three days after he was sent away, the mansion at Nishinomiya had burned to the ground, and the lady had moved to her own residence at Momozono and was said to be sunk in grief; hearing this, the author was very sad, and since her own health had not cleared, she lay thinking and set down all that gathered in her mind — far more, indeed, than properly concerned her — and out of it came a long poem, unsightly as it was. She added a further poem at the end of it. She wrote them and put them aside; but a woman in attendance found them and said how very moving it was, and that she wished the lady might be shown them. It would look stubborn and unbecoming if it were known to come from here, they agreed, and so they had the poems copied on plain paper, folded formally, and tied to a shaved stick. If asked where it came from, the messenger was to say from Tōnomine — meaning that it should be taken for a letter from the lady's own brother, the lay priest. By the time it had been taken in, the messenger had gone. What the lady made of it there, the author does not know.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The exiled Minister is the Minister of the Left of Nishinomiya, sent away in the Anna affair; the text gives no name. His wife was a daughter of Fujiwara no Morosuke, and she too is unnamed. The lay priest of Tōnomine is her brother, a monk, likewise unnamed. Momozono was the lady's own residence.
It is the end of the sixth month of the second year of Anna, and the places are the author's dwelling and the lady's residence at Momozono.
Lying ill, she set down what had gathered in her mind and made a long poem; this was written at the end of it.
A woman in attendance found the two poems where they had been left and said the lady ought to see them. Since it would look unbecoming for them to be known to come from here, they were copied on plain paper, folded formally, tied to a shaved stick, and sent with instructions that if anyone asked, the messenger should say they came from Tōnomine — that is, from the lady's brother, the lay priest. The messenger was gone by the time it was taken in, and the narrative closes by saying that what the lady made of it is not known.

The opening means: when one looks at that house — the residence at Momozono to which she moved when burned out. The mugwort gate of the second line is the settled phrase for a dwelling grown wild for want of visitors. The third line means shut fast, though it also carries the mugwort's own choking of the gateway, so that whether it is a person or the weeds that closes it is left undecided. The closing lines ask whether she could ever have thought things would stand so, the particle giving the question something close to the force of a denial: she could not have imagined it. A great house become a mugwort gate within a single year is set against what its mistress must once have expected. Where the long poem had traced two lives at length, this single verse shows one thing only, a ruined gate, and stops. Given that it was sent unsigned, disguised as a letter from her brother, it is a poem that entrusts to a scene of desolation a sympathy which could not be spoken directly.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other