In this way [composing poems] we passed [the hours] talking idly. Afterwards this lady separated from the Court and left us. She remembered that night and sent me word—
That moonless, flowerless winter night
It penetrates my thought and makes me dwell on it—
I wonder why?
It touched my heart, for I also was thinking of that night:
In my dreams the tears of that cold night are still frozen.
But these I weep away secretly.
The Princess still called my stepmother by the name of Kazusa[56]—Governor's lady. Father was displeased that that name was still used after she had become another man's wife, and he made me write to her about it:
The name of Asakura in a far-off country,
The Court now hears it in a divine dance-song:—
My name also is still somewhere heard [but not honourably].[57]
One very bright night, after the full moon, I attended the Princess to the Imperial Palace. I remembered that the Heaven Illuminating Goddess was enthroned within, and wanted to take an opportunity to kneel before the altar. One moon-bright night [1042 A.D.] I went in [to the shrine] privately, for I know Lady Hakasé[58] who was taking care of this shrine. The perpetual lights before the altar burned dimly. She [the Lady Hakasé] grew wondrously old and holy; she seems not like a mortal, but like a divine incarnation, yet she spoke very gracefully.
The moon was very bright on the following night and the Princess's ladies passed the time in talking and moon-gazing, opening the doors [outer shutters] of the Fujitsubo.[59] The footsteps of the Royal consort of Umetsubo going up to the King's apartment were so exquisitely graceful as to excite envy. "Had the late Queen[60] been living, she could not walk so grandly," some one said. I composed a poem:
She is like the Moon, who, opening the gate of Heaven,
goes up over the clouds.
We, being in the same heavenly Palace, pass the night
in remembering the footfalls of the past.
The ladies who are charged with the duty of introducing the court nobles seem to have been fixed upon, and nobody notices whether simple-hearted country-women like me exist or not. On a very dark night in the beginning of the Gods-absent month, when sweet-voiced reciters were to read sutras throughout the night, another lady and I went out towards the entrance door of the Audience Room to listen to it, and after talking fell asleep, listening, leaning, ...[61] when I noticed a gentleman had come to be received in audience by the Princess.