Yo no naka wa omoi no hoka ni narutaki no fukaki yamaji o tare shirasekemu

English Translation

The world turns out to
be other than one looked for —
turns to Narutaki:
and who was it that told you
of so deep a mountain road?

Meaning

The world turns out other than one looked for — turns to Narutaki; and who was it that told you of so deep a mountain road?

Commentary

54 The Retreat at Narutaki

On the fourth of the sixth month, setting out before Kaneie's period of abstinence was over, she went to the temple at Narutaki in the western hills and shut herself up there. Kaneie came to fetch her and she would not go; letters passed, and life at the mountain temple went on. Her sister visited, Kaneie's messenger came, she hardened a sorrowful resolve, and another letter came from him. Letters of inquiry arrived one after another, and though she answered them the next day, the time went by while she turned over such thoughts as that she did not mean to stay shut up forever. She put that state of mind into a poem and sent it to one who had written. An answer came. Then, to the gentlewomen on night duty, someone who had once served in that office sent a poem, saying that they too must be attending their mistress with heavy hearts, and that there is a poem about how high and low alike have their risings and fallings. Hearing of it from the woman, the author told her to answer quickly, and she replied that seeing their mistress holding back her tears made them all wretched. Later a relative came to call, and the next day sent the things needed for a long stay away from home, adding that it must have been hard to come all that way to a mountain temple, with two poems. The author wrote back with great care and returned two poems of her own. Afterward letters passed with Tōshi, and a poem came also from an ascetic of the temple who had crossed the Ōmine range from Mitake to Kumano. In time Michitaka called, her father Tomoyasu came for her, and at last she came down from the mountain when Kaneie came to fetch her.
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. Narutaki is a place in the western hills of the capital, where the temple stood. The one who sent the letter of inquiry, the former attendant on night duty, the gentlewoman, the relative and the ascetic are none of them named in the text.
It is the sixth month of the second year of Tenroku, and the place is the mountain temple at Narutaki.
It is the second of the two poems the relative sent with the supplies; the first is "Yo no naka no yo no naka naraba natsukusa no shigeki yamabe mo tazunezaramashi."
The author wrote back with great care, returning "Mono omoi no fukasa kurabe ni kite mireba natsu no shigeri mo mono naranaku ni" and one other.

The opening begins from the same phrase as the first poem, binding the two together. The second means: into a state no one looked for, and passes to the third. The word there is the verb for becoming and at the same time the place name Narutaki, and on it the poem turns: the statement that the world turns out otherwise than expected is itself the device by which the name of the place is produced, and no smoother way of working a place name into a poem could be found. The fourth names the deep mountain road, restating the grass-grown hillside of the first poem. The close conjectures who can have told her of it — a lament that anyone should have made such a place known to her. In form it reproaches her, but what it laments is the whole train of circumstances that brought her there; the grief the first poem directed at the world is gathered in the second into a single place name. As a pair, the two make a well-balanced message of condolence.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other