Is it truly this—
The one who fled from meeting me
As wife long ago,
Though years have passed since that time,
Showing no sign of better?
- Meaning
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Is this truly the one who turned away from being my wife and passed the years since then, yet showing no sign of having fared any better?
- Commentary
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62. The Fragrance of Long Ago
There was a woman whom a certain man had not visited for many years. Perhaps she was not very perceptive; following the unreliable words of others, she had come to serve someone living in the provinces. Without realizing that the man was once her husband, she served him food and attended to him.
When night came, the man said to the master of the house, "Please bring the woman from earlier here," and the master brought her to him. The man asked the woman whether she remembered him and recited a poem, but she gave no reply. When the man asked, "Why do you not answer?" the woman said, "My tears overflow so that I cannot see, and I am unable to say anything."
The poem was composed by the man in response to the woman’s words.
Though the man removed his own clothing and gave it to her, the woman cast it aside and fled, and no one knew where she had gone.
The woman likely did not wish her former husband to see the miserable state she had fallen into. The reason she could not speak may not have been only shame, but also regret and a sense of guilt for having left the man and gone away to the provinces.
- Source
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Ise Monogatari
- Other
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If true to its name,
Then Tawared Isle must be
But vain and inconstant—
They say it wears, as a robe,
The wet sleeves of the waves.
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Where now can it be,
The fragrance of long ago—
O cherry blossoms?
Though once in full bloom, today
They have fallen into moss.
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Her tresses ninety-nine—
One year short of a hundred,
All in tangled white—
She must still long after me,
For I see her in a dream.
-
Upon the straw mat spread,
Laying down one sleeve of mine—
Shall it be tonight
That, without meeting the one
I long for, I sleep alone?