That face does not leave
this body of mine at all—
the mountain cherry,
though with all the heart I had
I left my heart there with it
- Meaning
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Her face will not leave me for a moment—that mountain cherry—though I left every part of my heart behind there with it.
- Commentary
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Part One: Wakamurasaki
Back in the capital, Genji wrote to the northern hills the very next day. He could not put the girl out of mind for an instant, and wished to press again his wish to take her in. This poem went with that letter, saying that even having come down from the hills his heart has not come with him. The nun answered this one too, and his wish was not easily granted.
"Omokage" is the image of an absent person rising in the mind—here, the girl. "Mountain cherry" carries straight over from the poem he spoke in the hills, and through the exchange the phrase has settled as the word for her. "Though I left all my heart there" says he placed his whole heart on that spot, and the paradox is that her face follows him anyway. Feeling after a parting is drawn in a pair: the heart left behind and the face that will not stay behind.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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