Shimotsuke ya oke no futakura o ajikinaki kage mo ukabanu kagami to zo miru

English Translation

Shimotsuke, and its
Futara — this bucket lid
I look at instead,
and find it a bitter mirror
in which no face appears.

Meaning

Shimotsuke, and its Futara: this bucket lid I look at instead, and find it a bitter mirror in which no face appears.

Commentary

61 The Exchange between the Retainer and the Gentlewoman

The year turned to the third of Tenroku. While she was settling her resolutions for the new year, Kaneie came on the eighth of the first month. The next day, as he was leaving, one of his retainers sent a poem to a gentlewoman of the author's household. She answered it, putting wine and something to eat in the lid of a bucket and sending it back to him.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and became Major Counselor in this year; he would rise to be regent and chancellor. The retainer was one of Kaneie's men and the gentlewoman one of the author's; the text names neither.
It is the ninth of the first month of the third year of Tenroku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
Kaneie had come on the eighth, and as he was leaving the next day one of his retainers sent this poem to a gentlewoman of the household.
She answered it, putting wine and food in the lid of a bucket and returning it with "Sashiidetaru futakura o mireba mi o sutete konomu wa tama no konu to sadametsu."

The opening names the province of Shimotsuke, set down in order to call up the mountain Futara that stands there. The word in the second line is the lid of a bucket, and its sound answers Futara, so that the poem drops in a single step from the name of a province to a household utensil. That a poetic place name should be raised and then land on a bucket lid gives the verse the lightness proper to an exchange between servants. The third line means flat, unsatisfying, and leads into the image that follows. The word for reflection in the fourth is what appears on water or in a mirror: taking the lid for a mirror, he says that the face which should appear there is not to be seen. The close is bound by an emphatic particle and states it flatly. The whole complaint of not meeting is narrowed to the one point of a mirror with no face in it, and the material is simply whatever lay at hand. That the poems of servants should be recorded alongside those of their masters is of a piece with the exchanges of the gentlewomen set down during the retreat at Narutaki.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other