Samushiro no shita matsu koto mo taenureba okamu kata dani naki zo kanashiki

English Translation

Even the waiting
I did in secret, beneath
the matting, is done;
and there is not so much as
a place to set it down.

Meaning

Even the waiting I did in secret beneath the matting is over now; and there is not so much as a place to set it down.

Commentary

53 Setting Out for the Western Hills

When the abstinence was over she moved back to her own house, and was more at a loss there than ever. The long rains had brought up the weeds, and between her devotions she had them dug out. There was a day when that shameless man drove past the very gate of her house, clearing the way before him in his usual splendid style. She was at her prayers when they set up a cry that he was coming, and her heart lurched; but he drove straight past, and everyone sat staring at her face and saying nothing. She herself could not speak for two hours and more. On the first of the sixth month a letter came, saying that although he was in abstinence, it was from beneath the Emperor's own roof. Thinking it strangely rare, she read: was the pain now over? how long was she to be in that lodging? it had seemed so inconvenient that he had not been able to come; he had gone on a pilgrimage and been kept away by a defilement. Her bitterness grew, but she bore it and wrote an answer. Then, thinking that even to be remembered like this was a nuisance, and that there might well be more to regret as there had been before, she resolved to remove herself for a while: there was the temple in the western hills where she usually went, and she would go there before his abstinence was over. So she set out on the fourth. Since his abstinence would end that very day, she was in an anxious hurry as she gathered her things; and under the upper matting she found the morning medicine, tucked inside a folded paper, still lying where it had been all the time she had been away and back. When someone found it and asked what it was, she took it and wrote on that same folded paper. In the letter she wrote: they say one cannot change one's very body, and yet there may be a world where you do not drive past my gate, and so I go today; and this too has turned into a strange piece of unasked-for telling. She sent it by the boy, who was going to report on the days of seclusion. If he should be asked, she told him, he was to say that she had written it, gone out at once, and directed that it be left and that he withdraw. Kaneie, reading it, must have felt the haste of it. His answer said that all of it was reasonable enough, but where was she going? the season would be inconvenient even for devotions; let her think of it as doing him this one favor; there were things to be talked over in any case, and he would come at once. Then came a poem, and the words: it is very hard. Reading it, she hurried the more and set out.
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 boy is her son Fujiwara no Michitsuna. The temple in the western hills is the one at Narutaki, the setting of the seclusion that follows. A folded paper is one carried in the breast of the robe, used for wrapping things or for writing on.
It is the fourth day of the sixth month of the second year of Tenroku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
While she was gathering her things to set out for the temple in the western hills, the morning medicine was found under the upper matting, still tucked in its folded paper where it had been left. When the women found it and asked what it was, she took it and wrote this on that same paper.
She added a letter and gave it to the boy to carry; Kaneie must have been much put out, for he wrote that he would come at once, and sent with it "Asamashi ya nodoka ni tanomu toko no ue o uchikaeshikeru nami no kokoro yo."

The opening names the narrow matting, setting at the door of the poem the very mat under which the medicine lay. The phrase in the second line means to wait secretly within oneself, and it also carries the sense of being underneath the mat, so that the physical fact of the medicine lying there becomes the figure of a hidden waiting. The third means that even this has come to an end. The fourth names a place to set a thing down: the place for the medicine, and at the same time a place for herself. The close is bound by an emphatic particle and states the grief of having no such place. Taking notice of a trifling household object — a dose left untouched all the while she was away and back — and moving from where it should be set to where she herself should be, the poem works in the manner of the water in the hair-washing bowl in the first book. That it was written on the spot, on the very paper, in the middle of packing for a departure, accounts well enough for the pressure in it.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other