ひたすらにまつ共いはゝ休らはて
行へきものを妹か家路に
行へきものを妹か家路に
- Roma-ji
-
Hitasura ni matsu to mo iwaba yasurawade yukubeki mono o imo ga ieji ni
- English Translation
-
If only you had said
that with all your heart you waited,
without hesitating
I should surely have set out
upon the road to your home
- Meaning
- Had you only told me that you were waiting with all your heart, I would have taken the road to your house without a moment's hesitation.
- Commentary
-
4 Waiting at Dusk
The morning after their first night, having exchanged morning-after poems with the prince, Izumi Shikibu wondered at her own strange fate and grieved, remembering how much the late prince had once said to her. When the familiar page boy arrived, she thought he brought a letter from the prince, but he did not. Though she chided herself for feeling hurt like some woman given to love, she entrusted a poem to the boy as he went back.
The woman is Izumi Shikibu, daughter of Ōe no Masamune and, as the wife of Tachibana no Michisada, Governor of Izumi, mother of Koshikibu no Naishi. The prince is Prince Atsumichi, fourth son of Emperor Reizei. His principal wife was a daughter of Fujiwara no Naritoki, whose elder sister Seishi was a consort of the Crown Prince Okisada. The late prince was Atsumichi's elder brother by the same mother, Prince Tametaka, who had died in the sixth month of Chōhō 4 (1002).
When "Matamashi mo kabakari koso wa aramashika omoi mo kakenu kyō no yūgure" arrived, the prince was deeply touched, but wary of arousing suspicion by going out every night and of being criticized before his brother's first death anniversary, he held back and sent this reply after dark. After the poem he wrote, "It pains me to think you must believe my feelings shallow."
Izumi Shikibu answered that she thought nothing of the kind and sent "Kakaredomo obotsukanaku mo omōete kore mo mukashi no e ni koso arurame," adding that without his comfort she might simply fade away, if only a little. The prince meant to visit her, but the days slipped by.
The opening lines mean "if only you had said you were waiting with all your heart," taking up her "had I been waiting," with a conditional form.
The third line means "without hesitation," with a negative connective. The lower verses mean "I should have gone along the road to your house," with an auxiliary of expectation and an adversative particle, the destination placed last by inversion; "imo" is a word men used for a beloved woman. Seizing on her words, since she had not said she was waiting, he turns the reason for his absence back on her while conveying how much he wishes to come.
- Author
- Prince Atsumichi
- Source
- Izumi Shikibu Nikki
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Matamashi mo kabakari koso wa aramashika omoi mo kakenu kyō no yūgure
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Kakaredomo obotsukanaku mo omōete kore mo mukashi no e ni koso arurame