晴れぬ夜の月待つ里を思ひやれ
同じ心に眺めせずとも
同じ心に眺めせずとも
- Roma-ji
-
Harenu yo no tsuki matsu sato o omoiyare
onaji kokoro ni nagame sezu tomo - English Translation
-
Think of this village
waiting for the moon on a
night that will not clear,
even if you do not gaze
with the same heart as we do
- Meaning
- Think of the house that waits for a moon on a night that will not clear—even if you do not watch the sky with the same heart.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Suetsumuhana
Days passed with no visit from Genji, and the women urged their mistress to write. At last she took up her brush and set this poem down on old-fashioned purple paper. Genji read it unmoved and simply put it aside. The old-fashioned, awkward quality of her verse only pushed his interest further away.
"A village waiting for the moon on a night that will not clear" is a house waiting for a moon that never rises, standing for herself waiting for a man who does not come. "Even if you do not gaze with the same heart" says she expects nothing of him. She voices no reproach and only asks to be thought of, which is modest enough; but the expression follows old models exactly and has none of the wit then in fashion. It is the poem that best shows how she writes.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Though I know it well, that not to speak may say more than speaking would say, to be shut out like this is a hard thing to bear indeed
- I have not yet seen any sign that the evening mist will ever clear, and here is the rain at dusk drawing out more gloom in me
- The icicles hung at the eaves where morning sun strikes have come untied, and why then should the ice there stay bound and hold itself closed
- The one who looks on that snow fallen on a head grown old with the years wets, no less than he does, his own sleeve on this morning here