Sode hizuru toki o dani koso nagekishika mi sae shigure no furi mo yuku kana

English Translation

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.

Meaning

It was grief enough, those hours when my sleeves were wet; and now my very body, like the cold rain, goes on falling and growing old.

Commentary

57 Lament at the End of the Ninth Month

At the end of the ninth month, on a day of cold rain, one of her women suggested that she might go quietly to Hatsuse. The author answered that she would go when spring came, but wondered whether, wretched as she was, she would still be alive by then; and she composed a poem.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Hatsuse is the temple in Yamato, to which she had already gone once that year. The cold rain of the poem is the intermittent rain of early winter.
It is a day of cold rain at the end of the ninth month of the second year of Tenroku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
One of her women suggested she might go quietly to Hatsuse; she answered that she would go when spring came, but wondered whether, wretched as she was, she would still be alive by then, and composed this poem.
After it come the lament on the day of frost and then the exchange on the day of cold rain in the twelfth month.

The opening means that the sleeves are wet, that is, wet with tears. The second means: even those hours alone, its particles marking at once the least case and an emphasis, so that the sense is that grieving over the moments when her sleeves were wet had been hardship enough. The third closes that emphatic construction. The particle in the fourth is additive: not her sleeves only but her very self. The cold rain is the intermittent rain of early winter, the actual weather of the day and at the same time a figure for tears. The verb at the close means both that rain falls and that one grows old with the years, and on it the poem turns: as the cold rain goes on falling, so her own body goes on aging. To her woman's suggestion of a journey to Hatsuse she answers, in verse, with the question of whether she will live until spring, and the seasonal rain carries the sense of time running short. In the first book, at "Kiekaeru tsuyu mo mada hinu sode no ue ni kesa wa shigururu sora mo warinashi," tears on the sleeve and cold rain in the sky were likewise laid together; the same pairing returns here after many years.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other