わびて又とくと騷げどかひなくて
程經る物はかくこそありけれ
程經る物はかくこそありけれ
- Roma-ji
-
Wabite mata toku to sawagedo kai nakute hodo furu mono wa kaku koso arikere
- English Translation
-
At my wits' end, I
hurried and unpicked and hurried,
and it came to nothing:
whatever the years pass over
turns out to be like this.
- Meaning
- At my wits' end I hurried and unpicked and hurried again, and it came to nothing: whatever the years pass over turns out to be like this.
- Commentary
-
62 The Remaking of the Robe
On the fourteenth of the first month Kaneie sent word that he would like an old court robe made over. She let it lie; and the next morning he sent a messenger to press her, with a poem. When she sent back only the remade robe, with no letter, he complained that to send the thing alone and no word was not very gracious. To that the author made a poem.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and would rise to be regent and chancellor. The robe is the outer garment of court dress, its color fixed by rank. In the first book too there is a scene in which Kaneie sends clothes to be made up and the household sends them back untouched.
It is the fifteenth of the first month of the third year of Tenroku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
She had sent back the remade robe with no letter, and Kaneie complained that the thing alone and no word was not very gracious; this poem answers that.
After this exchange Kaneie becomes Major Counselor, and the account moves on to the reading of a dream that hints at what is to come.
The opening means at a loss, putting first the state of one who has been pressed. The word in the second line means quickly, and also to unpick a garment, so that the actual work of taking the robe apart and sewing it up again is folded into it: making haste and unpicking cloth are the same word. The third means to no purpose, saying that hurrying changed nothing. The verb in the fourth means both that time passes and that a thing grows old, so that the length of the delay and the age of the robe are said at once. The close is bound by an emphatic particle and states the realization. On the face of it the poem excuses a late piece of sewing; but the suggestion that it is not only garments which grow old with time is at work in it, so that a complaint about receiving no letter is answered by a remark about a marriage growing old. It is a poem of business with a single thread of grievance run through it.
- Author
- The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- Looking at the lid you have held out to me, I have settled it: though one throw oneself away in wanting, no jewel will come.
- That it should take so long makes me uneasy. Let me put the robe on and wear it into softness — come, have it sent to me now.
- Crossing the barrier, I came to a night's lodging on a pillow of grass — and yet it does not seem to me a thing of one night only.
- I am uncertain. This pillow of grass, on which I was not myself — such a night's lodging as this I have not known before now.