Travels with a Writing Brush by Meredith McKinney

Author:Meredith McKinney
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241310861
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

FROM A TALE UNASKED

Near the end of the second month, I left the Capital with the departing moon. Though I had severed my life from my old home without a backward glance, thoughts of the uncertainties of this world where no return can be relied upon drew belated tears to my sleeves, and even the moon reflected in those drops seemed a tearful face, so that it was with tremulous heart that I arrived at the Barrier of Ōsaka.

Here I could not discover even the lingering traces of Semimaru’s5 famous hut of old, where he once lived and wrote the words ‘whether in palace or in lowly hut / all is boundless’, and the form I saw reflected when I bent to the Barrier’s pure spring waters moved me with the unfamiliar traveller’s guise of my departure’s first steps on the far journey, halting my feet.

A single cherry tree stood there at the height of its blossoming, and even this my eyes were loath to leave. There in the blossoms’ shade also rested four or five others on horseback, apparently country folk though neatly dressed. Perhaps they saw those flowers with the same feelings as myself.

yuku hito no These cherry blossoms

kokoro o tomuru halt the heart

sakura kana of the passerby –

hana ya sekimori barrier guards of sorts

ōsaka no yama on Ōsaka Mountain

And with such thoughts I went on my way, to arrive at the waystation called Kagami, or Mirror.

It was just on dusk, and the sight of asobi wandering about in search of a night of love filled me with a deep melancholy at the cruel ways of this world. I was touched to sadness too by the dawn’s temple bell that sent me on my way again.

tachi-yorite Though I come to gaze

miru to mo shiraji at mirroring Mount Kagami

kagami yama it cannot know

kokoro no uchi ni the image of that lingering face

nokoru omokage that still haunts my heart6

Days went by, and I came to the waystation of Akasaka in the land of Mino. Unused to travel as I was, the passing days had been hard on me, so in my weariness I paused to stay here. The innkeeper had two asobi with him, sisters who played elegantly on the koto and biwa, which brought back old times for me,7 so I ordered up sake for them and asked them to perform. The one who seemed the older of the two was evidently deeply troubled by something, for though she was distracting herself by plucking the biwa tears filled her eyes, and I watched her full of sympathy to imagine that she was surely suffering much as I was. These tears of mine at memories of lost love, so unbecoming to a nun’s black sleeves, must have troubled her, for she wrote this poem on the tray that held the sake cups, and handed it to me:

omoi-tatsu What was in your heart

kokoro wa nan no that prompted you to rise

iro zo to mo and leave the world behind you

fuji no

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