天雲の山のはるけきまつなれば
そばぬるいろはときはなりけり
そばぬるいろはときはなりけり
- Roma-ji
-
Amagumo no yama no harukeki matsu nareba soba nuru iro wa tokiwa narikeri
- English Translation
-
Being a far pine
on a mountain wrapped in the
clouds of heaven, the
color that wets beside it
is evergreen, unchanging.
- Meaning
- Being a far pine on a mountain wrapped in the clouds of heaven, the color that wets beside it is evergreen, and does not change.
- 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.
It answers the Assistant Master's poem, saying that even the two words "I saw it" showed a coldness, enough to wet the beech tree.
After this exchange he sent word that the seasonal division fell within the old year, and with it "Ito semete omou kokoro o toshi no uchi ni haru kuru koto mo shirasete shi gana."
She takes back his beech and his wetting. The opening names the clouds of the sky and introduces the far mountain of the second line, making a scene of great distance. The word in the third line is the pine, and it is also the verb to wait; on it the poem turns, so that being a pine on a far mountain carries the sense of one who waits at a distance. The fourth takes over his wet beech unchanged. The word at the close means enduring as rock, evergreen and unaltering, and belongs with the pine. However wet it may look, a pine is evergreen and its color does not change: to a man who has charged her with coldness she answers that her manner has been the same from the first. Where he read a mood into two short words, she replies that there is no change there to be read; the refusal is maintained, and the poem is finished off with the pine's own associations.
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- Year after year I have lain on one spread sleeve alone; but never once has there been a time when tears soaked through the robe I slept in.
- 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.
- This heart of mine, that presses so — I would have you know that it may clear, as spring itself comes on within the compass of the old year.
- If the year is to end, and end for nothing, then I shall become one who does not even meet the spring — nor meet with you at all.