Disheleved: Poem Number 80

A clever morning-after love poem that I felt was fun to share:

Japanese	Romanization	Translation
長からむん	Nagakaran	I do not even know
心も知らず	Kokoro mo shirazu	how long your feelings will last.
黒髪の	Kurokami no	My long black hair
乱れてけさは	Midarete kesa wa	is all disheveled and, this morning,
ものをこそ思へえ	Mono wo koso omoe	my thoughts too are in a tangle!

The author of this poem is Taikenmon-in no Horikawa (待賢門院堀川, dates unknown), or “Lady Horikawa of the household of Empress Taiken”. Empress Taiken was the consort to Emperor Toba, and was the mother of Emperor Sutoku (poem 77) who was later exiled.

The use of imagery of “disheveled hair” was a common device often used by women, or writing poetry about women, to express feelings of frustration or anxiety.

As we’ve seen before, morning-after poems were very popular at this time in Japan as many of the aristocracy of the Heian Court would have love trysts between each other. Often the first meeting was the morning important, not surprisingly. It set the tone for the rest of the relationship, so a meeting like this was often celebrated in poetry.

Of course, there was another side to these trysts in the Heian Period too.

P.S. Featured photo is Gypsy in Reflection, by Gustave Courbet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons