我ならぬ人まつならば待つといはで
いたくな越しそ沖つ白浪
いたくな越しそ沖つ白浪
- Roma-ji
-
Ware naranu hito matsu naraba matsu to iwade itaku na koshi so oki tsu shiranami
- English Translation
-
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.
- Meaning
- 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.
- Commentary
-
103 The Exchange on the White Waves Offshore
This time too no answer came. While he was wondering what it could mean, he heard that there were said to be a great many men courting her. That must be it, he thought, and sent a poem; and this time an answer came. When the year had turned he sent another, and that too was answered.
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 old poem in which waves cross the pine-clad hill of Sue serves as the figure for what could never happen — a change of heart — and this whole exchange is built upon that turn of phrase.
It is the twelfth month of the second year of Tenen, and the place is the woman's house.
Two poems having gone unanswered, he wondered what it meant, and then heard that a great many men were said to be courting her. That must be it, he thought, and sent this.
She replied with "Koshi mo sezu kosazu mo arazu namiyose no hama wa kaketsutsu toshi o koso fure."
In the first two lines the word for pine is also the verb to wait, and on it the poem turns: if she is a pine that waits for someone other than himself. It also picks up her own earlier description of herself as a far mountain pine. The third means: without saying that you wait, reproaching her for leaving the matter unsettled. The fourth is a prohibition: do not break so hard across. The close names the white waves offshore, which by the old poem about waves crossing the pine-clad hill of Sue stand for a change of heart. His mother too once wrote "Matsuyama no sashikoete shimo araji yo o ware ni yosoete sawagu nami kana," so that mother and son use the same old poem in their several situations — she of waves that could never cross, he forbidding them to cross, which is a different application.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Michitsuna
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- 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.
- 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.
- No doubt the heart of the wave is hard indeed; and yet there has been a pine that waited, and went on waiting, even across the year's end.