Waga naka wa soba no nuru ka to omou made miki to bakari mo keshikibamu kana

English Translation

Between us it has
come to this — enough, I think,
to wet the beech tree:
that even in the two words
"I saw it" a coldness shows.

Meaning

Between us it has come to this — enough, I think, to wet the beech tree: that even in the two words "I saw it" a coldness shows.

Commentary

101 The Twelfth Month: The Exchange Continues

The twelfth month came. The Assistant Master went on sending poems to the same woman. She said she was going out somewhere, and no answer came. The next day he sent to ask for a reply in words, and she wrote back only that she had seen it in the beech tree. He answered that, and she replied.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The Assistant Master is her son Fujiwara no Michitsuna. The woman is not named in the text. The tree in question grows in the hills and its leaves may color while it is still summer; its colored leaves were used in this pair's exchange in the sixth month as well.
It is the twelfth month of the second year of Tenen, and the place is the woman's house.
No answer had come to the previous poem; the next day he sent to ask for a reply in words, and she wrote back only that she had seen it in the beech tree. He answered at once with this.
She replied with "Amagumo no yama no harukeki matsu nareba soba nuru iro wa tokiwa narikeri."

The opening names what is between them, setting up a complaint of her coldness. The tree in the second line is a hill tree, and it is produced because her reply had said only that she had seen the letter in that tree. He takes that single word and makes it the center of the poem, so that one can see how this exchange lives on the smallest scraps of her language. The verb means to be wet, and the phrase exaggerates: enough to wet the tree itself. The third line gives the degree and hands on to the fourth, which names the mere words "I saw it." The verb at the close means to let a mood or manner show, and the line ends in an exclamation: even in so little there is a coldness. It is a complaint that a reply of two words carries a refusal in it — and the shorter her answers, the more the shortness itself becomes his material. The base text is disturbed, and the readings of the first and second lines are not settled.

Author

Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other