Tada naraji to bakari tataku kuina yue akete wa ika ni kuyashikaramashi - Murasaki Shikibu Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

ただならじとばかりたたく水鶏ゆゑ
あけてはいかに悔しからまし

Roma-ji: Tada naraji to bakari tataku kuina yue akete wa ika ni kuyashikaramashi
English Translation: For a water rail
that knocks as if it were no small matter,
were I to open,
how bitterly, I think,
I would have come to regret it
Meaning: Had I opened the door to a water rail knocking as though it were a matter of great urgency, how bitterly I would have regretted it.
Commentary: 41 The Exchange of the Water Rail

One night, as Murasaki slept in her room in the gallery, she heard someone knocking at the door. Too frightened to respond, she kept silent and did not open it until dawn. The next morning, a poem arrived from the one who had knocked.
The text does not name the visitor. The Shinchokusen Wakashū, however, attributes the poem to Fujiwara no Michinaga.
To the poem that arrived the next morning, "Yomosugara kuina yori ke ni nakunaku zo maki no toguchi ni tatakiwabitsuru," Murasaki sent this reply.
In it she justifies leaving the door closed and deflects the visitor's courtship. This exchange has long been discussed as a window onto the relationship between Murasaki and Michinaga.

The first three lines speak of a water rail knocking as if it were no ordinary matter, through an auxiliary of negative conjecture and a particle of degree. Picking up his "water rail" and "knocking" just as they were, she recasts his earnest knocking as nothing more than a water rail's whim.
The lower verses say how bitterly she would have regretted opening the door, using an auxiliary of the counterfactual. Against his complaint that he knocked until he despaired, she retorts that precisely because she did not open, she was spared regret, deflecting him with a light touch.
Author: Murasaki Shikibu
Source: Murasaki Shikibu Nikki
Prev Poem: Yomosugara kuina yori ke ni nakunaku zo maki no toguchi ni tatakiwabitsuru