Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan. Shikibu Murasaki

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СКАЧАТЬ of the beloved plum-tree

      Blooming under the eaves of the house which is gone.

      On the moon-birth of the Rice-Sprout month my sister died after giving birth to a child. From childhood, even a stranger's death had touched my heart deeply. This time I lamented, filled with speechless pity and sorrow.

      While mother and the others were with the dead, I lay with the memory-awakening children one on either side of me. The moonlight found its way through the cracks of the roof [perhaps of their temporary dwelling] and illumined the face of the baby. The sight gave my heart so deep a pang that I covered its face with my sleeve, and drew the other child closer to my side, mothering the unfortunate.

      After some days one of my relatives sent me a romance entitled "The Prince Yearning after the Buried," with the following note: "The late lady had asked me to find her this romance. At that time I thought it impossible, but now to add to my sorrow, some one has just sent it to me."

      I answered:

      What reason can there be that she

      Strangely should seek a romance of the buried?

      Buried now is the seeker

      Deep under the mosses.

      My sister's nurse said that since she had lost her, she had no reason to stay and went back to her own home weeping.

      Thus death or parting separates us each from the other,

      Why must we part? Oh, world too sad for me!

      "For remembrance of her I wanted to write about her," began a letter from her nurse – but it stopped short with the words, "Ink seems to have frozen up, I cannot write any more."42

      How shall I gather memories of my sister?

      The stream of letters is congealed.

      No comfort may be found in icicles.

      So I wrote, and the answer was:

      Like the comfortless plover of the beach

      In the sand printing characters soon to be washed away,

      Unable to leave a more enduring trace in this fleeting world.

      That nurse went to see the grave and returned sobbing, saying:

      I seek her in the field, but she is not there,

      Nor is she in the smoke of the cremation.

      Where is her last dwelling-place?

      How can I find it?

      The lady who had been my stepmother heard of this [and wrote]:

      When we wander in search of her,

      Ignorant of her last dwelling-place,

      Standing before the thought

      Tears must be our guide.

      The person who had sent "The Prince Yearning after the Buried" wrote:

      How she must have wandered seeking the unfindable

      In the unfamiliar fields of bamboo grasses,

      Vainly weeping!

      Reading these poems my brother, who had followed the funeral that night, composed a poem:

      Before my vision

      The fire and smoke of burning

      Arose and died again.

      To bamboo fields there is no more returning,

      Why seek there in vain?

      It snowed for many days, and I thought of the nun who lived on Mount Yoshino, to whom I wrote:

      Snow has fallen

      And you cannot have

      Even the unusual sight of men

      Along the precipitous path of the Peak of Yoshino.

      On the Sociable month of the next year father was looking forward with happy expectation to the night when he might expect an appointment as Governor of a Province. He was disappointed, and a person who might have shared our joy wrote to me, saying:

      "I anxiously waited for the dawn with uncertain hope."

      The temple bell roused me from dreams

      And waiting for the starlit dawn

      The night, alas! was long as are

      One hundred autumn nights.

      I wrote back:

      Long was the night.

      The bell called from dreams in vain,

      For it did not toll our realized hopes.

      Towards the moon-hidden days [last days] of the Rice-Sprout month I went for a certain reason to a temple at Higashiyama.43 On the way the nursery beds for rice-plants were filled with water, and the fields were green all over with the young growing rice. It was a smile-presenting sight. It gave a feeling of loneliness to see the dark shadow of the mountain close before me. In the lovely evenings water-rails chattered in the fields.

      The water-rails cackle as if they were knocking at the gate,

      But who would be deceived into opening the door, saying,

      Our friend has come along the mountain path in the dark night?

      As the place was near the Reizan Temple I went there to worship. Arriving so far I was fatigued, and drank from a stone-lined well beside the mountain temple, scooping the water into the hollow of my hand. My friend said, "I could never have enough of this water." "Is it the first time," I asked, "that you have tasted the satisfying sweetness of a mountain well drunk from the hollow of your hand?" She said, "It is sweeter than to drink from a shallow spring, which becomes muddy even from the drops which fall from the hand which has scooped it up."44 We came home from the temple in the full brightness of evening sunshine, and had a clear view of Kioto below us.

      My friend, who had said that a spring becomes muddy even with drops falling into it, had to go back to the Capital.

      I was sorry to part with her and sent word the next morning:

      When the evening sun descends behind the mountain peak,

      Will you forget that it is I who gaze with longing

      Towards the place where you are?

      The holy voices of the priests reciting sutras in their morning service could be heard from my house and I opened the door. It was dim early dawn; mist veiled the green forest, which was thicker and darker than in the time of flowers or red leaves. The sky seemed clouded this lovely morning. Cuckoos were singing on the near-by trees.

      O for a friend – that we might see and listen together!

      O the beautiful dawn in the mountain village! —

      The repeated sound of cuckoos near and far away.

      On that moon-hidden day cuckoos sung clamorously on trees towards the glen. "In the Royal City poets may be awaiting you, cuckoos, yet you sing here carelessly from morning till night!"

      One who sat near me said: "Do you think that there is one person, at least, in the Capital who is listening to cuckoos, and thinking of us at this moment?" СКАЧАТЬ