Taeki to mo kiku zo kanashiki toshitsuki o ikani kakekoshi kumo naranaku ni

English Translation

To hear that it has
broken — that is what grieves me.
All these years, how have
you spun and stretched it? You are
no cloud, to vanish away.

Meaning

To hear that it has broken is what grieves me. Through all these years, how have you spun and stretched it? You are no cloud, to vanish away.

Commentary

46 Exchange with the Lady of the Jōganden

The lady of the Jōganden had become Mistress of the Handmaids the year before last. That she should not so much as ask after such a state of affairs was strange; perhaps, since an estrangement had arisen between the author and Kaneie that ought never to have arisen, she found the author's house disagreeable as well. Thinking it wrong that she should not know how far things had gone, the author added a poem to a letter she was sending her. The answer came, with a great deal said, and very feelingly, and then a poem.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The lady of the Jōganden was Kaneie's sister, and had become Mistress of the Handmaids the year before last; the text gives no name. The estrangement that ought never to have arisen is that between Kaneie and the author.
It is autumn in the first year of Tenroku, and the place is the lady's residence.
It answers the author's poem declaring that between them, at least, the thread should not break for a while yet. The narrative says that the lady wrote a great deal, in the most affecting way, and that the poem came with it.
After this exchange the author sets her mind still more firmly on taking vows, and the account moves to the scene in which the boy sets his hawk free.

She takes back the spider and the breaking. The opening means: that it should have broken, reporting what has reached her as rumor. The second is bound by an emphatic particle and says that the hearing itself is grievous, implying quietly that she has not been holding the author at a distance. The third means all these long years. The verb in the fourth means to spin a thread across, belonging to the spider imagery while saying that the connection has been maintained. The word at the close means both a spider and a cloud, and the poem turns on it: taking up the other's spider, she adds that she is no cloud, to vanish without a trace. Spider and cloud are set within one sound, and the consolation — that nothing need break — is given entirely in the imagery. The base text is disturbed here, and the reading of the second half is not settled.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other