Furu yuki ni tsumoru toshi o ba yo o hetsutsu kiemu go mo naki mi o zo uramuru

English Translation

Living on through years
that pile as the snow piles down,
I find no season
appointed for my melting —
and it is myself I blame.

Meaning

Living on through years that pile as the snow piles down, I find no appointed season for my melting; and it is myself I blame.

Commentary

40 The Snowy Day in the Eleventh Month

So she was forced into a tiresome business, and into a great number of pieces besides; and of these, she hears, the one on the fishing fires and the one on the flock of plovers were chosen. While she was still put out about it, autumn ended and winter came. Nothing in particular happened, and yet everything felt unquiet; and in the eleventh month the snow lay very deep. For whatever reason, there came a day when she found her own condition unbearable, wretched and hard and sad. Brooding over it, she put what she thought into a poem. And while she thought so, the year turned, and it became the first year of Tenroku.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The screen poems continue from the previous section, having been forced upon her for the celebration of the Minister of the Left of Koichijō.
It is the eleventh month of the second year of Anna, and the place is the author's dwelling.
On a day when the snow lay very deep she found her own condition unbearable, wretched and hard and sad, and brooding over it this poem came to her.
It was sent to no one and stayed within her. While she thought so, the year turned and became the first year of Tenroku.

The opening sets the scene before her eyes and hands on to the second line, where the years pile up. That one verb should serve for both snow and years is the frame of the poem: the snow falling and settling becomes the years she has accumulated. The verb in the third line means to pass one's life, and it shares its sound with the falling of the first line, so that falling and living answer one another within the verse. The word in the fourth line means an appointed time: snow has a season in which it must melt, and she has none. Snow piles and then goes; the years only pile, and neither they nor she can melt away. The close is bound by an emphatic particle and names the object of her resentment as herself. Since the first book, resentment in this diary has generally been directed at Kaneie; here it turns upon a self that cannot melt, and setting the snow — which does melt — before it makes that turn the more visible.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other