うらみても言ふかひぞなき立ち重ね
引きてかへりし波のなごりに
引きてかへりし波のなごりに
- Roma-ji
-
Uramite mo iu kai zo naki tachikasane
hikite kaerishi nami no nagori ni - English Translation
-
Bitter as I am,
there is no use in saying—
after waves that rose
one upon another, then
drew away and left nothing
- Meaning
- There is no use in my resentment now, in the wake of waves that rose one over another and then drew back and left nothing behind.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Momiji no Ga
On a night when Genji was with her, To no Chujo forced his way in, feigning to draw a sword, and there was an uproar. The two men revealed themselves, laughed, and went off together, leaving her alone. The next morning she sent over the trousers and sash left behind on the spot, with this poem. Genji thought the boldness of it hateful, yet remembering her distress the night before he felt sorry for her and sent a brief reply.
"Urami" plays "looking at the bay" against "resentment," and "kai" plays "use" against "shell," so that a bay left without a single shell after the tide goes out carries the sense that resentment gets her nowhere. "Rising one over another" is both waves piling in and two men appearing one on top of the other. For the aftermath of a farce it is a highly worked piece, layered with double meanings, and her cultivation shows here again.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- The name you wrap up and keep hidden may yet leak out and be let known— through this middle robe of ours that we tore open pulling
- Knowing all the while that it hides nothing at all, you have come here in this thin summer robe, and I read that thinness as your heart
- At that roughened wave my heart is not stirred at all, and yet how should I not resent the shore that drew and let such a wave come in
- Were the two of you to break, I might be blamed for it—and fearing that, I have not so much as picked the pale blue sash up to look