見し夢を逢ふ夜ありやと嘆く間に
目さへあはでぞ頃も経にける
目さへあはでぞ頃も経にける
- Roma-ji
-
Mishi yume o au yo ari ya to nageku ma ni
me sae awade zo koro mo henikeru - English Translation
-
While I grieve and ask
if that dream night comes again,
not even our eyes
have been allowed to meet now,
and the days have worn away
- Meaning
- While I grieve and wonder whether that dreamlike night will ever come again, the days have gone by without so much as our eyes meeting.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Hahakigi
Refused again and again, Genji took Utsusemi's young brother Kogimi into his personal service, hoping to reach her through him. The boy grew attached to him and did as he was told, but his sister kept her heart firmly shut. Letter after letter went unanswered, and at last Genji sent this poem. She did not reply to this one either, and his longing only grew.
"The dream I saw" is the night he spent with her, and speaking of a real event as a dream carries the sense that it cannot come again. "Me sae awade" means not even being able to meet her eyes, laying "to meet" over "to match," and saying that so far from another night together, he cannot even look at her. Rather than reproach, the poem states the helplessness of watching time simply pass.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Before I have done blaming her for her coldness, at this break of dawn the cock crows to startle me into leaving all behind
- 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
- Not knowing the heart of the broom tree that fades out, I have lost my way along Sonohara's road, wandering there for nothing
- Bearing the sad name of what grows at Fuseya, a house of no count, the broom tree fades and goes out, scarcely there at all to see