問はぬをもなどかと問はで程ふるに
いかばかりかは思ひ乱るる
いかばかりかは思ひ乱るる
- Roma-ji
-
Towanu o mo nadoka to towade hodo furu ni
ika bakari ka wa omoi midaruru - English Translation
-
You do not ask why
I do not ask after you,
and the days wear on—
how greatly, all this while, has
my heart been torn and confused
- Meaning
- You never ask why I do not ask after you, and as the days pass, how greatly my heart is thrown into confusion.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Yugao
The shock of losing Yugao left Genji gravely ill, and he saw no one. Hearing of it, Utsusemi sent word in this poem. She had refused him to the last, yet she had never stopped thinking of him, and concern for his illness moved her to take up her brush. He answered, and the exchange that had lapsed between them started again.
"Not asking" is her own failure to send word, and "without asking why" is his failure to inquire after her reason. Repeating the verb encloses in one poem a state in which neither asks and the time simply passes. She uses no language of love, conveying her feeling only through whether or not inquiries are made—very much the manner of Utsusemi, who refuses and still keeps something back.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- That upper dew laid on the evening face flower, which I saw as light— it was nothing but a trick my eyes played at dusk that day
- 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
- I had come to know this cast-off shell of a world is a bitter thing, and still my life hangs upon a few leaves of words from you
- Weeping as I tie with my own hands, on this day, this under-sash cord— in what world am I to see it loosened, opened again