Jidai fudō uta’awase 104

Round One Hundred and Four

Left

たえぬるか影だにみえばとふべきをかたみの水はみ草ゐにけり

taenuru ka
kage dani mieba
toubeki ni
katami no mizu wa
mikusa inkeri
Is it all so hopeless?
Could I but see your face,
I would ask you, but
The water you have left behind
Is filled with water-weed.

207[1]

Right

雲となり雨となりても身にそはばむなしき空をかたみにやみん

kumo to nari
ame to narite mo
mi ni sowaba
munashiki sora o
katami ni ya min
Should you become a cloud, and
Then become raindrops
Falling on my flesh, then
Will the vacant skies
I see as a keepsake, perhaps?

208[2]


[1] Shinkokinshū XIV: 1239: When the Lay Priest Regent had not come to see her for a long time, she composed this on seeing the water in a basin for washing her hair.

[2] Shinchokusenshū XIII: 830: When the Gokyōgoku Regent ordered her to produce a hundred poem sequence.

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