朝ぼらけ霧立つ空のまよひにも
行き過ぎがたき妹が門かな
行き過ぎがたき妹が門かな
- Roma-ji
-
Asaborake kiri tatsu sora no mayoi ni mo
yukisugigataki imo ga kado kana - English Translation
-
At the break of dawn,
lost though I am in a sky
where the mist is thick,
here is the gate of the one
I love, hard to pass on by
- Meaning
- At daybreak, lost in a sky thick with mist, I come to her gate and find I cannot pass it by.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Wakamurasaki
On a wild night of falling hail, Genji went to the house where the girl was and stayed beside her through the night while she was frightened. Going home the next morning through heavy mist, he passed her gate and had an attendant call in, then spoke this poem. A woman of the house sent an answer. A few days later, on the night before her father was to fetch her, he carried the girl off to the Nijo residence.
"Asaborake" is the first faint light of day, the hour of the morning-after journey home. "Lost in a sky where the mist rises" lays not being able to see over not knowing one's own mind. "My love's gate" is an old poetic phrase for a lover's house, and saying he cannot pass it states his reluctance to go. That he uses the full form of a morning-after poem even though the person inside is a child shows how tangled this scene is.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- At Ashiwaka bay the seaweed is hard to find and hard to see, am I a wave that stands here and turns back with nothing gained
- Not knowing the heart of the wave that comes to shore, for the jeweled weed at Waka bay to bend down would be a light thing indeed
- If you stand and find this fence of mist hard to pass and go by our gate, then a bolt made of grasses would be no hindrance to you
- I have not yet seen the root, and still I hold dear this grass of the tie on Musashi plain, where I weary of parting the dew