Of Old Japan
from every corner of the heavens. It was about midnight and all were asleep.
We were sitting on the veranda. My sister, who was gazing at the sky thoughtfully, said, "If I flew away now, leaving no trace behind, what would you think of it?" She saw that her words shocked me, and she turned the conversation [lightly] to other things, and we laughed.
Then I heard a carriage with a runner before it stop near the house. The man in the carriage called out, "Ogi-no-ha! Ogi-no-ha!" [Reed-leaf, a woman's name or pet name] twice, but no woman made reply. The man cried in vain until he was tired of it, and played his flute [a reed-pipe] more and more searchingly in a very beautiful rippling melody, and [at last] drove away.
Flute music in the night,
"Autumn Wind"[1] sighing,
Why does the reed-leaf make no reply?
Thus I challenged my sister, and she took it up:
Alas! light of heart
Who could so soon give over playing!
The wind did not wait
For the response of the reed-leaf.
We sat together looking up into the firmament, and went to bed after daybreak.
At midnight of the Deutzia month [April, 1024] a fire broke out, and the cat which had been waited on as a daughter of the First Adviser was burned to death. She had been used to come mewing whenever I called
- ↑ Name of an old song.
