Yamabiko no irae ari to wa kikinagara ato naki sora o tazune wabinuru

English Translation

Though I have been told
an echo came in answer,
I have searched and searched
an empty sky where no trace
of any hand remains.

Meaning

Though I am told an echo answered, I have searched and searched an empty sky where no trace of a hand remains.

Commentary

38 The Pilgrimage to Mitake; Exchanges with the Lady of the Exiled Minister

While things went on so, she began to feel a little more herself; but past the twentieth of the month Kaneie set out in haste on a pilgrimage to Mitake. The young Michitsuna was to go in his train, so she made him ready and saw him off, and that evening, the old house having been put in order, she moved back to it. Those who were to have attended her had been left behind, and so she simply moved. Having sent with him the one child who gave her most anxiety, she went on praying and wondering how they fared; and about the first of the seventh month someone came at dawn to say that they had returned only that moment. The distance from here was now very great, she thought, so that coming and going would be hard for a while — and then about midday he appeared, which was surely something. About that time the wife of the exiled Minister, learning somehow that the earlier poem had come from Tōnomine, had — so it seemed, about the sixth month — sent an answer; but the messenger carried it to the wrong house. Those who received it evidently thought nothing strange, and answered it; and hearing of that answer at second hand it became clear that the place had been mistaken. There was nothing to be said; and yet to send the same thing again, when she must have heard of the other, would look perverse indeed. Hearing that they were exclaiming over how heartless she must think them, the author was amused, and resolving not to leave it there she wrote in the same hand as before. She wrote on pale blue paper and tied it in a formal fold to a branch thick with leaves. This messenger too set it down and vanished, so that the lady perhaps refrained, supposing it to be as before. Still it was uncertain. Everything about it was strange. After a time the lady found a trustworthy channel and sent a poem, written in a childlike hand on paper of thin ink and tied to a pine branch. The answer to it was written on walnut-colored paper and tied to a pine whose color had changed.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and would rise to be regent and chancellor. The child who went in his train is her son, Fujiwara no Michitsuna. The wife of the exiled Minister is the wife of the Minister of the Left of Nishinomiya, sent away in the Anna affair; she had taken vows as a nun in the sixth month. The text gives no name. Tōnomine is where her brother, the lay priest, lived, and the earlier long poem had been sent as though it came from there.
It is about the seventh month of the second year of Anna, and the places are the author's dwelling and the lady's residence at Momozono.
The lady had answered the long poem sent earlier as though from Tōnomine, but the messenger carried her answer to the wrong house; those who received it answered without suspicion, and from hearsay of that answer the mistake became clear. To send the same thing again would look perverse, and yet she would not leave it there, and so she wrote in the same hand as before. It was written on pale blue paper and tied in a formal fold to a branch thick with leaves.
This messenger too set the poem down and vanished, so that the lady, supposing it to be as before, perhaps held back; no answer came at once. After a time she found a trustworthy channel and sent "Fuku kaze ni tsukete mono omou ama no taku shio no keburi wa tazune idezu ya."

The opening names the voice that comes back from the hills, a sound once thought to be a mountain god's reply. The earlier device of passing the poem off as a letter from Tōnomine is carried straight into that one word. The second line means that an answer is said to exist, referring to what she had heard at second hand. The third is adversative: so she hears, and yet. The word for trace in the fourth line means a hand of writing, so that the sky holds no trace of it anywhere and its whereabouts cannot be known. An echo is all voice and no body, and that is exactly the condition of an answer reported but never received. The close says that she has searched in vain. What was in truth a messenger's blunder, and faintly comic, is rendered by the single word for echo; and the necessity of continuing the correspondence without disclosing her name is smoothed over by the same figure.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other