たぢまのやくぐひのあとを今日見れば
雪の白濱白くては見じ
雪の白濱白くては見じ
- Roma-ji
-
Tajima no ya kugui no ato o kyō mireba yuki no shirahama shiroku te wa miji
- English Translation
-
Looking today at
the tracks the swan has left in
Tajima, I say:
like the snow on a white beach,
I will not see them left white.
- Meaning
- Looking today at the tracks the swan left in Tajima, I say: like snow on a white beach, I will not have them stay white.
- Commentary
-
72 Grief at the Bon Festival; The Yamato-Seeming Woman: The Exchange on White Paper
There was grief about the time of the Bon festival, and then a warning of death, after which she kept silence for a time. When the eighth month too had passed, Michitsuna, unable to believe that any of the woman's answers were in her own hand, sent her a poem in reproach. She answered on white paper, and he wrote again. From then on, whenever no answer came, he sent another poem.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Michitsuna was her son. The woman is the one the text calls the Yamato-seeming person, and she is unnamed. At that period a woman's replies were often written for her by an attendant, so that whether a letter was in her own hand served as a measure of what she felt.
It is after the eighth month of the third year of Tenroku had passed, and the place is the woman's house at the foot of Mount Miwa.
No answer came to the previous poem — she said it had grown dark. The next day, recalling that she had written her reply on white paper, Michitsuna sent this.
To this too no answer came — she was out, he was told — and the next day, when he asked for a reply, she said his poem had struck her as old-fashioned and that she would not answer it.
The opening names the province of Tajima, set down to introduce the bird that follows. The word in the second line is the old name for the swan, a white bird, and it establishes whiteness in the poem. The word for tracks in the third means both a bird's footprints and a hand of writing, and on it the poem turns: the swan's prints and the writing on white paper come together. The fourth names a beach white with snow, so that swan, snow and beach pile three white things one on another and thereby name the white paper itself. The close means that he will not look at them while they stay white — that a reply which is nothing but white paper is not worth looking at, and that he wants words of her own. The single fact that she used white paper is expressed by three successive figures, from place name to bird and from bird to snow and beach; the poem is built on nothing but agreement of color. The narrative records that the woman called this old-fashioned and would not answer it.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Michitsuna
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- How strange a thing is the thread the spider draws — and writes — knowing all the while that when the wind blows it will be scattered on the air.
- Though it be no more than a dewdrop, the spider's web has its life staked upon it — and who is there to keep the rough wind from it?
- You are right, of course. The years I spent in grieving and saying nothing have gone as old and holy as the shrine at Furu itself.
- Having seen you for no more than the space of a dream, I go on lost; and slow indeed it is to open — the gate of heaven.