Uchiharau chiri nomi tsumoru samushiro o nageku shiki ni wa shikaji to zo omou

English Translation

This narrow matting,
where only dust piles up no
matter how I sweep —
even so, it cannot match
the bedding down of my grief.

Meaning

This narrow matting, where only dust piles up however I sweep it — even so, it cannot match the bedding down of my grief.

Commentary

49 Resolving on a Long Fast in the Second Month

It was past the tenth of the second month. People said all sorts of things about his going for ten days and more to the house she had heard of. Passing the time in idleness, she came to the equinox, and thinking that on such nights at least she would keep a fast, she had the upper matting changed for a clean plain one; and seeing them beat the dust out of it, she thought how she had never once looked for such a thing as this, and it was more than she could bear, and a poem came to her.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The equinox is the seven-day observance centered on the vernal equinox, a fitting season to begin a fast. The upper matting is a mat laid over the flooring.
It is past the tenth of the second month of the second year of Tenroku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
The equinoctial week having come, she thought that on such nights at least she would keep a fast, and had the upper matting changed for clean plain matting. Watching them beat the dust from it, she thought how she had never imagined such a thing, and in her grief this poem came to her.
Afterward she went so far as to resolve on a long fast and on shutting herself up in a mountain temple, but those about her dissuaded her, and she decided to wait for the following month.

The opening names the beating out of dust, setting the very work going on before her at the door of the poem. The second means that sweep as one will, only dust accumulates. The third names the narrow matting, the very thing being changed for the fast. The fourth speaks of bedding down one's grief, of lying upon it, a phrase that arises naturally from the matting. The verb at the close means both to spread a thing out and to be equal to something, and the poem turns on it: matting on which dust piles cannot match the piling of grief. Dust and grief are set side by side as two things that gather. In the first book, at "Taenuru ka kage dani araba tou beki o katami no mizu wa mikusa inikeri," she read the end of a marriage in the dust on neglected water. Reading her own sorrow in accumulating dust is a habit to which this diary returns.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other