At this dusk, when signs
the spider gives are so clear,
to be told to wait
and let the daylight go by
makes no sense that I can see

Meaning

On an evening when the spider's signs are this plain, being told to let the daylight pass first makes no sense at all.

Commentary

Part One: Hahakigi

　The last to speak was the Tо̄ Shikibu no Jo, who told of a learned scholar's daughter. When he called on her, she said she had taken garlic as medicine for a chill and asked him to wait until the smell had gone. Put off by so comic a refusal, he spoke this poem and fled. She sent a poem after him, and Genji and the others burst out laughing at the story.

　"Sasagani" is the spider, and the poem draws on the old belief that a spider spinning its web foretells a lover's coming. "Hiruma" holds both "daytime" and the interval until the garlic smell fades, so that solemn learning and a ridiculous circumstance are tied together in one word. The scene closes the rainy-night discussion on laughter, and serves as a judgment on a woman whose scholarship has outrun everything else.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

At this dusk, when signs the spider gives are so clear, to be told to wait and let the daylight go by makes no sense that I can see

At this dusk, when signs
the spider gives are so clear,
to be told to wait
and let the daylight go by
makes no sense that I can see