Imosegawa mukashi nagara no naka naraba hito no yukiki no kage wa mitemashi

English Translation

If we were still, like
Imose river, what we were
in the old days, then
I might at least have watched the
shapes of people going and coming.

Meaning

If we were still what we were in the old days, like the river between Imo and Se, I might at least have watched the shapes of people going and coming.

Commentary

55 Exchange with the Principal Handmaid

As the days at the mountain temple at Narutaki went on, Michitaka called, her father Tomoyasu came for her, and at last she came down from the mountain when Kaneie arrived to fetch her. The day of her return, and Kaneie's behavior afterward, were what they had always been. About that time, supposing her to be still at the temple, the Principal Handmaid sent a poem, and the author answered it.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The Principal Handmaid was Kaneie's sister; the text gives no name, and she is taken to be Fujiwara no Tōshi, who had received that office two years before. The Principal Handmaid was head of the Palace Attendants' Office. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and would rise to be regent and chancellor.
It is the second year of Tenroku, after the author had come down from the mountain, and the place is the Principal Handmaid's residence.
She composed it supposing the author to be still at the temple at Narutaki, not knowing that she had already come down.
The author answered with "Yoshi ya mi no asemu nageki wa imoseyama naka yuku mizu no na mo kawarikeri."

The opening names a river of Yamato that runs between the hills called Imo and Se. Since the word Imose is used of the bond between a man and a woman, or between close companions, the name of the river leads straight into the relation between two people. The second means: just as they were in the past. The word in the third means both that relation and the middle of the river, and it joins scene to feeling: if their bond were still what it was, as the river still runs between the two hills. The fourth names people going and coming, that is, crossing the river to visit. The close is a counterfactual: she might at least have seen them. The lament is that she cannot even visit a woman shut up in the hills — but the author had in fact already come down, so the poem arrived at cross purposes. Exchanges with this correspondent in the first book also turn repeatedly on discrepancies of distance, whether a fence between two houses or a letter delivered to the wrong door; and here again the poems pass while one party has the other's whereabouts wrong.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other