Aruru ura ni shio no keburi wa tachikeredo konata ni kaesu kaze zo nakarishi

English Translation

On that desolate
bay the smoke of salt did rise;
but there was no wind
that turned and carried it back
this way, to where I waited.

Meaning

On that desolate bay the smoke of salt did rise; but no wind turned to carry it back this way, to where I waited.

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 place is the author's dwelling.
It answers the lady's question whether the author would not seek out the smoke. It was written on walnut-colored paper and tied to a pine whose color had changed.
With this exchange the unsigned correspondence comes to rest for a time. In the eighth month the account moves on to the screen poems the author was pressed to write for the celebration of the Minister of the Left of Koichijō.

She takes back the salt smoke and the wind. The bay of the opening is a desolate one, pointing to the ruin of the residence to which the lady had moved after the fire; and since the word for bay also carries the sense of the heart, what is desolate is at once the shore and the mind. The second and third lines grant that the smoke did indeed rise — that is, that the letter was truly sent. The fourth names the wind that should have turned and carried it here, so that the messenger's mistaking of the house is converted into a question of which way the wind blew. The close is bound by an emphatic particle: there was no such wind. Told that smoke was there to be found, she allows the smoke and answers that nothing carried it, settling the matter so that the fault lies with neither of them. That it was tied to a pine whose color had changed may be read as a delicacy toward a woman who has taken vows, or as a reflection on all things that change.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other