Since a limit holds,
this robe of pale ink is light
in its color, yet
the tears have gone and made of
my sleeves a deep pool indeed

Meaning

Custom sets a limit, and so this mourning robe is pale; but my tears have turned the sleeves into a deep pool.

Commentary

Part One: Aoi

　Home from the funeral, Genji could not sleep, and went back over how things had stood between him and Aoi no Ue. That they had never come to be easy together, that his careless behavior had wounded her—there was nothing but regret in it. Looking at the grey mourning robe they had put on him, he thought that had he gone first she would have dyed hers far darker, and spoke this poem. Afterward he passed his days reading sutras, taking what comfort he could in the sight of the infant.

　"Since a limit holds" refers to the fact that the color of mourning was fixed by rank and relation. A husband's robe was pale grey, and the whole poem turns on the gap between that paleness and the depth of his grief. "Fuchi" is a deep still pool, figuring sleeves soaked through. Setting the lightness of the color against the depth of the tears states a sorrow the forms cannot carry, and the tangled feeling of a man full of regret comes through clearly.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Since a limit holds, this robe of pale ink is light in its color, yet the tears have gone and made of my sleeves a deep pool indeed

Since a limit holds,
this robe of pale ink is light
in its color, yet
the tears have gone and made of
my sleeves a deep pool indeed