あはぬせを戀しとおもはゞ思ふどち
へむ中川にわれをすませよ
へむ中川にわれをすませよ
- Roma-ji
-
Awanu se o koishi to omowaba omou dochi hemu nakagawa ni ware o sumase yo
- English Translation
-
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.
- Meaning
- 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.
- Commentary
-
94 The Exchange on the Nakagawa in Flood
In the fifth month the Master of the Right Stables sent for Michitsuna; but as he was about to go the rain came down hard and did not let up all night, so that he could not. He therefore sent a poem, saying that a letter at least might pass between them, and the Master of the Right Stables answered. Afterward, when the rain had stopped, he came to the author and spoke of the marriage; and she tore off part of a letter of Kaneie's, in which he gave his reasons why pressing him would be difficult, and showed it to him.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Michitsuna was her son. The Master of the Right Stables was Kaneie's younger brother; the text gives only his office and no name. The Nakagawa is Hirohata Nakagawa, where the author had moved two years before, and also the name of the stream that ran through her grounds and past them.
It is the fifth month of the second year of Tenen, and the place is the Master of the Right Stables' residence.
It answers Michitsuna's poem, sent because the rain kept him from coming and a letter at least might pass.
After this exchange the rain stopped and he came to the author to speak of the marriage; and she tore off part of a letter of Kaneie's and showed it to him.
He takes back the other's river. The opening names the shallows where they do not meet; the word for shallows is at once a place in a stream and an occasion or chance, so that the talk moves to meeting while the water imagery holds. The second sets his correspondent's closing line up again as a condition. The third means: those who love one another. The fourth names the Nakagawa along which such people would come and go, turning the river from a barrier into a road. The same stream that blocked the way in the other poem is here the place where a bond is made. The close asks to be allowed to live there, on the argument that if he were housed beside it there would be no failing to meet. Since the house he is courting stands at Nakagawa, it amounts as well to asking to be taken into that household, so that what began as a note about rain passes directly into the matter of the marriage.
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- 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.
- 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.
- Sighing, I pass the nights and days; and the cuckoo goes on crying, crying there in the shadow of these white deutzia flowers.
- Why should it cry there of all places, in the shade? I have always heard that the branch of the deutzia has a heart that hides things well.