うへしたにこがるゝことをたづぬれば
胸のほかには鵜船なりけり
胸のほかには鵜船なりけり
- Roma-ji
-
Ue shita ni kogaruru koto o tazunureba mune no hoka ni wa ubune narikeri
- English Translation
-
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.
- Meaning
- Searching for what else burns, and moves up and down the river as I do, I find that besides my own breast there are the cormorant boats.
- Commentary
-
56 The Second Pilgrimage to Hatsuse: The Cormorant Boats at Uji
Kaneie came at last. In time she kept the fast for Hatsuse and set out on a second pilgrimage there. On the way, night fell at Uji, and watching the many cormorant boats with their flares moving up and down the river and passing one another, she composed a poem.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Hatsuse is the temple of that name in Yamato, much visited by those seeking the mercy of Kannon. Uji lies on the road from the capital to Hatsuse, and the cormorant boats are those that carry flares and fish with cormorants. On the return from the first pilgrimage to Hatsuse, in the first book, there are poems on the weirs at Uji.
It is the second year of Tenroku, on the road of her second pilgrimage to Hatsuse, and the place is the Uji river by night.
Night had fallen at Uji on the way to Hatsuse. Watching the many cormorant boats with their flares moving up and down the river and passing one another, she composed this poem.
It was sent to no one and stayed within her. Afterward Kaneie visits, letters come from the mountain temple, and the account moves on to the lament on the day of cold rain at the end of the ninth month.
The opening means up and down, describing exactly the movement of boats on the river. The verb in the second line means both to be rowed and to burn with longing, and on it the poem turns: the boats plying to and fro and the burning in her breast are held in a single word. Since the boats carry flares, the imagery of fire is at work in the word for burning as well. The third means: when one looks for it, and passes to the answer below. The close says that besides her own breast there were the cormorant boats, the auxiliary marking the discovery: seeing a crowd of boats carrying fire up and down a river at night, she finds that something else burns as she does. On the return from the first pilgrimage in the first book she called the weirs beneath the mist lovely beyond words; but that was part of an exchange with Kaneie, who had come to meet her, while this is a poem shown to no one — the same river, and a wholly different place in the book.
- Author
- The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Sadly, then, is this the end of all your thinking? At Isonokami — in the old days I was used to rain being no hindrance.