Fuku kaze ni tsukete mo mono o omou kana ōumi no nami no shizu kokoro naku

English Translation

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.

Meaning

At every gust of the wind I find myself full of thought — like the waves of the great sea, with no quiet left in me at all.

Commentary

104 The Exchange on the Wind

She thought it strange, and wondered what it could mean. When the wind was blowing hard he sent a poem, and the answer came in another hand, tied to a branch with a single leaf on it, saying that the one who should have replied was taken up with the day's business. He wrote back at once, saying how sorry he was, and sent another poem. That is the last poem recorded in the diary. There were no great storms that year, and a light snow fell twice. While she was preparing the Assistant Master's robes for New Year's Day and what he was to wear at the Blue Horse Banquet, the last day of the year arrived. Leaving tomorrow's things to others, she reflected that it was astonishing how the year's end had come upon her so, and, watching the observances for the spirits, she sank as always into thoughts that had no end, and so the year finished. Being the last night of the year, there came, very late, the sound of someone knocking at the gate.
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 Blue Horse Banquet, held on the seventh of the first month, was the viewing of white horses. The diary records twenty-one years, from the eighth year of Tenryaku to the second of Tenen, and ends with the close of this year.
It is about the first month of the third year of Tenen, and the place is the woman's house.
The Assistant Master found her poem about the thousand-year pine strange and wondered what it meant; and when the wind was blowing hard he sent this.
The answer came in another hand, tied to a branch with a single leaf on it, saying that the one who should have replied was taken up with the day's business.

The opening means at every stirring of the wind, saying that his heart moves whenever it blows. The second and third close on an exclamation and pause. The fourth names the waves of the great sea, continuing the imagery of shore and wave that has carried this exchange along. But where the white waves offshore and the incoming waves had turned on the single question of crossing or not crossing, here the wave is produced as a figure for a mind that will not be still, so that the word does a different work. The close means without any quiet, laying waves whipped up by wind over a heart that will not settle. Taking her unsatisfactory answer, he neither presses her nor pleads, but states only the disturbance of his own mind — a step back from the pitch of the earlier exchanges. The actual weather, a day of high wind, serves directly as the scene of that mind.

Author

Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other