よしや身のあせむなげきは妹背山
なか行く水の名もかはりけり
なか行く水の名もかはりけり
- Roma-ji
-
Yoshi ya mi no asemu nageki wa imoseyama naka yuku mizu no na mo kawarikeri
- English Translation
-
Let it go, then — this
grief that my own self should fade.
The water running
between Imo and Se: even
its name has changed by now.
- Meaning
- Let it go, then, this grief that I should fade away. The water running between Imo and Se — even its name has changed by now.
- 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 her return from the mountain, and the place is the author's dwelling.
It answers the Principal Handmaid's poem, composed in the belief that she was still in the hills.
After this exchange Kaneie comes at last, and in time she keeps the fast for Hatsuse and sets out on a second pilgrimage there.
She takes the other's river and gives it back as the hills, moving from one form of the same poetic name to another; that shift is the point of the reply. The opening means: let it be, whatever comes of it, and begins the poem in a tone of resignation. The verb in the second line means to fade in color, and it also carries the sense of water growing shallow, which provides the footing for the water imagery that follows. The third names the two hills, Imo and Se, between which the Yoshino river runs. The fourth takes the other's word for the middle and applies it to the water going between them. The close states as a discovery that even its name has changed: the river called Imose no longer answers to its name — which is to say that the bond between them is no longer what it was. Where the other had supposed a bond unchanged since the old days, she answers that even the name has gone, so that the supposition cannot stand. She accepts the concern while saying nothing at all about having been thought still in the hills, and answers on the single point of the changed name.
- Author
- The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- Even the near hills, I thought, had cloud lying on them — and as for the deep heart of the white cloud, both those who know and those who do not.
- 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.
- Searching for what else burns, and rows up and down the river as I do, I find that besides my breast there are the cormorant boats.
- It was grief enough, the hours when my sleeves were wet; and now my very body, like the cold rain, goes on falling, and growing old.