That Chinese robe—and
since your heart is hard to me,
my sleeve goes on so,
doing nothing else at all
but growing wet and wetter

Meaning

I send this robe; and since your heart is hard toward me, my sleeve does nothing but grow wetter and wetter.

Commentary

Part One: Suetsumuhana

　At the end of the year, New Year's clothing arrived from the lady for Genji: garments in dated colors that looked as though they had been worn before, with this poem attached. She had meant it as her best effort of consideration, but the old-fashioned taste and the commonplace verse drew an honest reaction out of him. It is this gift that leads him to give her the name Suetsumuhana.

　"Karagoromo" is a formal robe with wide sleeves, long used in poetry as a word that leads into "sleeve," "cuff," and "to wear." "Sobotsu" is to be soaked through with tears. The poem follows exactly the pattern of a woman's poem to a man—reproach, and a wet sleeve—with almost nothing of her own added. Yet that very conformity conveys her earnestness and her old-fashioned mind, so that the poem and the character are of a piece.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

That Chinese robe—and since your heart is hard to me, my sleeve goes on so, doing nothing else at all but growing wet and wetter

That Chinese robe—and
since your heart is hard to me,
my sleeve goes on so,
doing nothing else at all
but growing wet and wetter