かひなくて年暮れはつる物ならば
春にもあはぬ身ともこそなれ
春にもあはぬ身ともこそなれ
- Roma-ji
-
Kai nakute toshi kurehatsuru mono naraba haru ni mo awanu mi to mo koso nare
- English Translation
-
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.
- Meaning
- If the year is to end, and end for nothing, I shall become one who does not even meet the spring — nor meet with you at all.
- Commentary
-
102 The Exchange on Spring Coming within the Year
Sending word that the seasonal division fell within the old year and that she should come, the Assistant Master sent a poem. No answer came. Before long — perhaps there was some bond from a former life in it — he sent another. To that too there was no answer.
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 seasonal division marks the turn from one season to the next; in a year such as this, when the first day of spring fell before the new year, spring arrived while the old year still ran.
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 poem on spring within the year, and before long he sent this one after it.
This time too there was no answer. While he wondered what it meant, he heard that a great many men were said to be courting her, and sent "Ware naranu hito matsu naraba matsu to iwade itaku na koshi so oki tsu shiranami."
The opening means to no purpose, referring to the days that have passed without a reply. The second means that the year runs entirely out: where the previous poem looked to spring arriving within the year, this looks to the year's ending. The third sets the condition and passes to the fourth, where the verb means both to encounter a season and to meet a person; on it the poem turns, so that failing to meet the spring and failing to meet her are one. The close is bound by an emphatic particle: he will become such a one. Reversing the argument of the previous poem, he says that if no answer comes he will be a man who, in a year when spring arrives before the year is out, still never meets the spring. The same accident of the calendar is written from the side of hope and from the side of despair, so that the two poems make a pair.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Michitsuna
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- Being a far pine on a mountain wrapped in the clouds of heaven, the color that wets beside it is evergreen, unchanging.
- 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 you are a pine that waits for someone not me, then do not say you wait — and do not break so hard across, white waves off the shore.
- Not crossing, and not not crossing either — the shore where the waves come in has gone on being broken over, year after year after year.