千歲經るまつもこそあれほどもなく
越えては歸る程やとほからず
越えては歸る程やとほからず
- Roma-ji
-
Chitose furu matsu mo koso are hodo mo naku koete wa kaeru hodo ya tōkarazu
- English Translation
-
There are pines, they say,
that live a thousand years; and
what is a crossing
that goes over and comes back
in no time — is that so far?
- Meaning
- There are pines that live a thousand years; and a crossing that goes over and comes back in no time — is that distance so great?
- 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 about the first month of the third year of Tenen, and the place is the woman's house.
It answers the Assistant Master's poem about a pine that waited across the year's end.
He found the reply strange and wondered what it meant; and when the wind was blowing hard he sent "Fuku kaze ni tsukete mo mono o omou kana ōumi no nami no shizu kokoro naku."
She takes back his pine and his crossing. The opening names a thousand years, since the pine was held to live that long. The second, bound by an emphatic particle, sets that beside him: there are such pines, after all. Where he had made much of having crossed a single year, she produces a tree that crosses a thousand, and gently laughs at the scale of his claim. The third means: in no time at all. The fourth means going over and coming back, laying the wave that breaks and withdraws over the year that turns and comes round again. The close asks whether such an interval is really far — a single year being nothing beside a pine's thousand. She relativizes his claim by sheer magnitude, declining without giving offense. The author records that the Assistant Master found this reply strange, which suggests how much was left unsaid in it.
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- 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.
- At every gust of the wind that blows, I find myself full of thought — like the waves of the great sea, with no quiet left in me at all.
- The one I think of — I can guess well enough who she is; and yet on this branch of grief, this cast-down bough, my heart finds no rest.