It is in shallows
that you have stepped down, I think;
as for me, my own
road of love is deep enough
to soak me quite through and through

Meaning

It must be shallows you have stepped into; my own road of love is deep enough to soak me through and through.

Commentary

Part One: Aoi

　Genji answered her poem only after it had grown quite dark. To have only one's sleeves wet is shallow, he says; his own road soaks him body and all. The words did nothing to comfort her, and the distance between them stayed as it was. From about this time her spirit began to leave her body and drift, and in time it appeared at Aoi no Ue's bedside.

　"Shallows" takes up her "stepping down" and returns it. "Sobotsu" is being drenched, so that against her wet sleeves he sets a body soaked through, and the poem becomes a contest of depth. Measuring love by the depth of water is a standard conceit; but where she wrote of her own suffering, he asserts the depth of his own feeling, which is no answer at all. The exchange itself shows two people talking past each other.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

It is in shallows that you have stepped down, I think; as for me, my own road of love is deep enough to soak me quite through and through

It is in shallows
that you have stepped down, I think;
as for me, my own
road of love is deep enough
to soak me quite through and through