This night that breaks up
before I have grieved my fill
at my wretched life—
laid over the bird's crying,
my own voice cries out as well

Meaning

On a night that breaks before I have grieved my fill over my own wretchedness, my voice cries out along with the bird's.

Commentary

Part One: Hahakigi

　Utsusemi answered Genji's poem with this one. A married woman who had passed a night she never intended, she grieves over what her life has become. Genji left once he had her reply, but from then on she set her heart against ever receiving him again, and would not answer even the appeals he sent through her young brother, Kogimi.

　"Akade" sounds both "unsatisfied" and "breaking into dawn," tying the ending night to a grief that will not clear. "Torikasanete" plays on the bird and on laying one thing over another, returning the same sound he had used in "toriaenu." Where his poem is about the haste of parting, hers is about her low standing and her position as another man's wife, and it becomes plain that the two of them are looking at entirely different things.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

This night that breaks up before I have grieved my fill at my wretched life— laid over the bird's crying, my own voice cries out as well

This night that breaks up
before I have grieved my fill
at my wretched life—
laid over the bird's crying,
my own voice cries out as well