Waga omou hito wa taso to wa minasedomo nageki no eda ni yasumaranu kana

English Translation

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.

Meaning

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.

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.
To his poem about thinking of her at every gust of wind, the answer came in another hand, tied to a branch with a single leaf, 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 this.
It is the last poem recorded in this diary. What follows is a brief account of the days to the year's end, and the diary closes with the sound of someone knocking at the gate, very late on the last night of the year.

The first two lines mean that he can guess who it is he thinks of. Since the answer had come in another hand, he says that he knows well enough whose it is, and by saying so quietly reproaches her for its not being her own words. The same theme appears in the first book, where Kaneie complains of replies written by a substitute, and in the third, where Michitsuna himself reproaches this woman for the same thing; and it returns here in the diary's last poem. The word in the third line means grief and also a piece of wood cast down, and on it the poem turns. The fourth names a branch, which follows naturally from the cast-down wood and at the same time points to the actual object — the answer had been tied to a branch with a single leaf on it. The close is an exclamation that his heart finds no rest. That the branch bore only one leaf becomes, of itself, the image of a heart with nowhere to settle. Though it is the last poem of the whole diary, it makes no summarizing gesture and confines itself to a single branch sent as a gift — a way of closing that answers to the first book, which ends in an everyday exchange on the Uji river, and the second, which ends in a grievance on a night when the rain had stopped.

Author

Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other