Ikani semu ike no mizunami sawagite wa kokoro no uchi no matsu ni kakaraba

English Translation

What is to be done,
if the water of the pond
rises and breaks and
catches at the pine within
the heart — the waiting there?

Meaning

What is to be done, if the water of the pond rises and breaks and catches at the pine within the heart — at the waiting there?

Commentary

90 Poems Written on the Paintings

The Master of the Right Stables kept summoning Michitsuna and would not let him go. Michitsuna brought home a beautiful painting from his house, showing a woman leaning against the fishing pavilion and gazing steadily at the pines on the island in the pond. The author composed a poem and pasted it to that picture. To another scene in the same painting — a man living alone, who has broken off in the middle of a letter and sits with his chin on his hand, lost in thought — she pasted a second poem. Michitsuna carried the painting with these poems on it back to the Master's house and left it there.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Michitsuna was her son. The Master of the Right Stables was a younger brother of Kaneie; the text gives only his office, and a marginal note in the base text identifies him as Fujiwara no Tōdo. Such paintings showed scenes of women's life, and writing poems on them to be sent was one of the amusements of the age.
It is the second year of Tenen, and the place is the author's dwelling.
The Master of the Right Stables kept summoning Michitsuna and would not let him go. Michitsuna brought home a beautiful painting from his house, in which a woman leans against the fishing pavilion and gazes at the pines on the island in the pond. The author composed this and pasted it to that picture.
To another scene in the same painting, a man living alone who has broken off in the middle of a letter and sits with his chin on his hand, she pasted "Sasagani no izuko to mo naku fuku kaze wa kakute amata ni nari zo surashi mo." Michitsuna carried the painting to the Master's house and left it there.

Since the poem is made to fit a painted scene, the picture is its material. The opening begins in dismay: what is to be done. The second names the water of the painted pond, and the third means that the waves rise and break; over the image of a disturbed surface lies the sense of talk that gets about. The fourth means: within the heart, and passes to the close, where the word is both the pine growing on the island and the verb to wait, and on it the poem turns — the single fact that what the woman in the picture gazes at is a pine is the device that produces the word for waiting. The final clause supposes the waves catching at it, and the poem ends with the condition still standing. Reading the painted woman's gaze at the pine as a figure for a heart that waits, and then fearing that waves may break upon it, is aptly done for a poem attached to a picture. And since the painting with this poem pasted to it was returned to the suitor's house, it does more than comment on a picture.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other