This pink that remains
at the withered brushwood fence
where the grasses die—
I look on it as a sign
of the autumn we parted

Meaning

This pink still standing by the withered fence I look on as a keepsake of the autumn that took her from us.

Commentary

Part One: Aoi

　After the Captain had gone, Genji had gentians and pinks picked from among the dead grasses and sent them to Omiya through Saisho no Kimi, the infant's nurse. This poem went with them. The pink stands for the baby, and the poem says that he looks on the motherless child as a keepsake. Receiving it, Omiya could not hold back her tears, and sent a poem in return.

　"A brushwood fence where the grasses have died" gives the bleakness of the season directly. The pink has long been used for a small child, and here it is the newborn boy. "The autumn we parted" is the autumn that took Aoi no Ue, laying the season and the parting together. One flower left standing in a dead landscape answers exactly to a child left behind by its mother, and the whole situation is said without a word of explanation.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

This pink that remains at the withered brushwood fence where the grasses die— I look on it as a sign of the autumn we parted

This pink that remains
at the withered brushwood fence
where the grasses die—
I look on it as a sign
of the autumn we parted