When I look and take
the smoke of the one I knew
to be that cloud there,
even this evening sky grows
close and dear to me somehow

Meaning

When I look up and take the smoke of the one I knew for a cloud, even the evening sky becomes dear to me.

Commentary

Part One: Yugao

　After the woman's sudden death at the deserted mansion, Genji, fearing a scandal, had Koremitsu move the body secretly to Higashiyama for cremation. He went himself to take his leave of her, and on the way back grief left him barely able to keep his seat on the horse. Watching the smoke rise, he spoke this poem. Afterward he fell gravely ill and could not appear in public for some time.

　"The one I knew" means the woman he had visited so intimately. Taking smoke for cloud is an old conceit, but the turn by which the whole evening sky then becomes dear to him is where the depth of his grief shows. He voices no reproach and no lament, only the act of looking at the sky, and the size of the loss sits inside that restraint. It is the best known poem of the Yugao chapter.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

When I look and take the smoke of the one I knew to be that cloud there, even this evening sky grows close and dear to me somehow

When I look and take
the smoke of the one I knew
to be that cloud there,
even this evening sky grows
close and dear to me somehow