夏ごろもたつやとぞ見る千早ふる
神をひとへにたのむ身なれば
神をひとへにたのむ身なれば
- Roma-ji
-
Natsugoromo tatsu ya to zo miru chihayaburu kami o hitoe ni tanomu mi nareba
- English Translation
-
A summer robe, and
I see it being cut — for I
am one who trusts the
gods, mighty gods, with a single
heart, as this robe is single.
- Meaning
- A summer robe, and I see it being cut; for I am one who trusts the mighty gods with a single heart, as this robe is single-layered.
- Commentary
-
92 Offering Robes to the Goddess
In the fifth month, as she was setting out on a pilgrimage, one of her women said that for a goddess it was best to sew robes and offer them. So the author cut three little garments for paper figures out of close-woven silk, and wrote a poem on the inner panel of each.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The silk named is a fine, closely woven kind. The figures are the small paper effigies offered to a god in a person's stead, and she sewed garments to clothe them. The text does not say which shrine she was going to.
It is the fifth month of the second year of Tenen, and the place is the shrine to which she was going.
It is written on the inner panel of the third of the three little garments she sewed of close-woven silk for the paper figures.
After the three were offered, and past the fifth-month festival, the account moves to the Master of the Right Stables growing impatient.
The opening names the thin robe worn in summer, a word chosen for the fifth month. The verb in the second line means to cut cloth and also to rise or appear, its emphatic particle governing the close; some read into the line the sense of a god manifesting himself. The third is the fixed epithet attached to gods, and introduces the god of the fourth line. The word there means an unlined robe of a single thickness and also singly, with nothing else in mind, and on it the poem turns: since a summer robe is made unlined, the season's garment states of itself a heart that trusts with nothing held back. The close gives the reason and ends there. Where the first two poems set out a definite wish that the marriage be restored, this one speaks only of the trust placed in the god, and it stands last as the close of the set. The ingenuity lies in stating the singleness of faith by a term for how a robe is made.
- Author
- The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- This white robe I shall make over to the goddess, that she may turn it — and turn us back again to a bond with nothing between.
- This Chinese robe, whose hem I have worn soft with years — if only I could turn it, and make of that hem the under panel of my own.
- My Nakagawa, my mid-river that flows on without a break, is high with rain; and the one who is far off is dear to me.
- If the shallows where we do not meet are dear to you, then let me live beside that Nakagawa where those who love pass and repass.