Like clouds that rise
and stand in mid-air,
leaving no trace—
so has my fleeting self
come utterly to nothing.
- Meaning
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Like clouds that rise and stand in mid-air, leaving no trace, so has my fleeting self come utterly to nothing.
- Commentary
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Episode Twenty-One: "If I go forth and leave"
There were a man and a woman who loved one another and had no thought of turning their hearts elsewhere, yet over some trifling matter their married life became burdensome.
The woman left the house without telling him where she was going.
This poem is the woman’s reply to the man’s poem, "In doubting heart that thinks I would forget—that very doubt makes all the more my sorrow deeper than before."
After this exchange of poems, the husband and wife each came to form ties with other people.
In this poem the woman expresses that the feelings she once cherished for the man when they were husband and wife have vanished without a trace.
It conveys the subtlety of their parting: the woman’s heart gradually drifting away, and the man perhaps unable to perceive the delicate movements of that heart.
- Source
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Ise Monogatari
- Other
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