Unaware, somehow,
at my sleeves the harbor
is all in tumult;
only because a great
Chinese ship has drawn near.
- Meaning
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Unaware even to myself, at my sleeves there is a tumult like a harbor stirred to waves, only because a great Chinese ship has drawn near.
- Commentary
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Episode Twenty-Six: "The Chinese ship"
A certain man lamented that he had become unable to make his own the woman who lived around Gojō.
He composed this poem in reply to someone.
For this man it must have been a great event.
In truth it was nothing of such importance, yet at an occurrence that astonished even himself, tears overflowed and troubled him.
In the end, it is a poem of lost love.
The Chinese ship is a vessel that goes back and forth to China, and is very large.
- Source
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Ise Monogatari
- Other
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In autumn fields,
my sleeves, parting the bamboo grass
at break of day—
yet more than that dew-wetness
are the nights I lie without you.
-
Knowing not, perhaps,
that I am like a shore
where no miru grows,
the fisherman, not weary,
drags his feet and comes.
-
I alone, I thought,
had one so given to thought—
none other there was;
yet beneath the water’s
surface, there was one more.
-
At the water’s mouth,
am I perhaps seen there?—
even the frogs,
beneath the water, raise
all their voices as one.