Tsuyu fukaki sode ni hietsutsu akasu kana tare nagaki yo no kataki naruramu

English Translation

On sleeves heavy with
dew I lie growing colder,
and so pass the night.
Who, I wonder, is the enemy
that makes the long night long?

Meaning

On sleeves heavy with dew I lie growing colder, and so pass the night. Who, I wonder, is the enemy that makes the long night long?

Commentary

81 Poems Sent into the Silence

In the ninth month the rice was being cut in the fields around the house. Michitsuna went on writing to the woman as before, and sent her a poem. No answer came. After a while he sent another.
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. Since the move to Nakagawa, the household has lived with fields on every side.
It is the ninth month of the first year of Tenen, and the place is the woman's house at the foot of Mount Miwa.
No answer had come to the poem on the jewel's cord, and after a while Michitsuna sent this.
After this series the narrative records how frequent the requests for sewing became after the move to Nakagawa, and in time the year turns.

The opening means that the dew lies thick — the scene of a ninth-month night, and at the same time sleeves wet with tears. The second means growing cold on those sleeves, setting down the bodily sensation of wet cloth chilling in the night air. Poems that make dew stand for tears are common; to go on and say that the wetness is cold is unusual, and the actual feeling of sleeping alone comes through in it. The third closes on an exclamation at passing the night so. The fourth begins the question: who, then. The word at the close means an adversary, one to be contended with, so that the poem asks who it is that makes the long night long. It reproaches the woman who does not answer, but names no one and goes no further than the question. To call a long night an enemy is uncommon and rather strong for a love poem, and the strength of the phrase is a measure of how long the silence has now run.

Author

Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other