逢ふまでの形見ばかりと見しほどに
ひたすら袖の朽ちにけるかな
ひたすら袖の朽ちにけるかな
- Roma-ji
-
Au made no katami bakari to mishi hodo ni
hitasura sode no kuchinikeru kana - English Translation
-
While I looked on it
as a keepsake to hold me
until we should meet,
this sleeve of mine has wholly
worn away and rotted through
- Meaning
- While I kept it only as a token to hold me until we met again, my sleeve has worn quite away with tears.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Yugao
Utsusemi's husband, the Iyo Deputy, was appointed to his province, and she was to leave the capital with him. Genji had kept as a keepsake the thin robe she once slipped out of and left behind, and on her departure he decided to return it. This poem went with it. She answered, and with that exchange their story reaches a kind of close.
"Katami" is an object kept for remembrance—here the robe she left. "The sleeve has rotted through" is an old poetic way of saying tears have worn it out, and it measures the length of time spent without meeting. Returning the robe carries the sense of a parting, and rather than reproach her he shows the depth of his feeling simply by saying how much he has wept.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Had I never once, faint as it was, tied a knot in that eaves-reed there, on what could I now hang out this small complaint of the dew
- Even at the wind that comes hinting through the reeds, this low reed beneath is half bound up in the frost and cannot open itself
- Like the cicada, I have changed and left behind that summer garment, and seeing it returned now my voice cries out all the same
- The one who has passed and the one who parts today go by two separate roads, and where either of them goes I know not, this autumn dusk