Waga sode no kōri wa haru mo shiranaku ni kokoro tokete mo hito no yuku kana

English Translation

The ice upon my
sleeve knows nothing of the spring;
and yet here is one
who goes on her way with her
heart, and her ice, quite thawed.

Meaning

The ice upon my sleeve knows nothing of the spring; and yet here is one who goes on her way with her heart, and her ice, quite thawed.

Commentary

83 The Purification and the Ice

An acquaintance took her along on a pilgrimage. On the way home there was a woman walking and eating an icicle, and when they asked why she ate it she answered that unless she did, her prayer would not be granted. Muttering that it was an ill-omened thing to do, the author composed a poem.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. That eating ice would gain one's wish was a popular belief of the time; the text does not say who the woman was. A purification is the rite of washing defilement away in water, and it is recorded here together with the pilgrimage.
It is early spring in the second year of Tenen, and the place is the road home from a pilgrimage.
An acquaintance had taken her along on a pilgrimage, and on the way back there was a woman walking and eating an icicle. Asked why, she said that unless she ate it her prayer would not be granted. Muttering that it was ill-omened, the author composed this.
It was sent to no one and stayed within her. The account moves on to the night of the earthquake on the fifteenth of the first month, and the poem spoken alone while waiting for the warbler.

The first two lines name the ice on her sleeve, that is, tears frozen there; likening tears to ice is the settled way of describing a heart gone cold. The second line means that it does not know spring has come — the season turns and she does not. The verb in the fourth means both that ice melts and that a heart relaxes, and on it the poem turns: the sight of a woman eating ice calls up the word for melting, which is then set against a heart that will not melt. The close is an exclamation at the woman who goes on her way, eating ice to gain her wish. The woman with her petition and the author with her unmelting ice stand facing each other across the single word for melting, so that a stranger's behavior seen on the road folds straight back into her own condition.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other