Page:Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan.djvu/78

 I could not read the poem to the end.

In the happier time I had often tried to compose halting poems [literally, of broken loins], but at present I had no word to say.

No person came to my side and I was very lonely and forlorn musing and guessing where he would be at every moment. As I knew the road he was taking [the same which is described in this journal], I thought of him the more longingly and with greater heart-shrinking. Morning and evening I looked towards the sky-line of the eastern mountains.

In the Leaf-Falling month I went to the temple at Udzumaza [Korinji] to pass many days.

We came upon two men's palanquins in the road from Ichijo, which had stopped there. They must have been waiting for some one to catch up with them. When I passed by they sent an attendant with the message: "Flower-seeing go?—we suppose."

I thought it would be awkward not to reply to such a slight matter, and answered:

I stayed in the temple for seven days, but could think of nothing but the road to the East.

I prayed to the Buddha, saying: "There is no way to change the present, but grant that we may meet 36