いづれぞと露のやどりを分かむまに
小笹が原に風もこそ吹け
小笹が原に風もこそ吹け
- Roma-ji
-
Izure zo to tsuyu no yadori o wakamu ma ni
ozasa ga hara ni kaze mo koso fuke - English Translation
-
While I try to tell
which of them the dew has made
its lodging upon,
the wind may well come blowing
over the low bamboo field
- Meaning
- While I am still working out which blade the dew has settled on, the wind may come sweeping across the field of low bamboo.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Hana no En
Impressed by her reply, Genji said that without a name he would have no way to find her, and pressed again for her identity. But dawn was breaking, there were sounds of people stirring, and he could not stay. This poem carries his urgency. In the end they parted with only their fans exchanged and no names given, and for some time afterward he could not discover who she was.
"Where the dew lodges" is the place the dew has settled, taking up her "grasses of the field." "The field of low bamboo" figures the difficulty of picking out one woman among a whole set of sisters. "The wind may come blowing" is a fear that the wind will spoil everything—that the chance will scatter as dew does. He carries her grass imagery straight forward while conveying the practical business of learning her name, and the poem is well made as one half of an exchange.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- That you too should know what moves the heart in deep night— like the setting moon it is no common bond, this, and so I take it to be
- If this wretched self should simply fade from the world, would you, in seeking, think you would not go to ask in the grasses of the field
- A feeling I have never known in all the world is on me, having lost the dawn moon's going in among the reaches of sky
- If the flowers here at my house were of a hue like any other, why should I go on waiting for you to come as I do