With you gone, the dust
has gathered on the wild pink—
and brushing away
the dew from it, how many
nights shall I lie down alone

Meaning

With you gone the dust has settled on the wild pink; brushing the dew from it, how many nights have I lain awake?

Commentary

Part One: Aoi

　Among Aoi no Ue's practice sheets was a line of old verse on the whiteness of frost. Beside it Genji wrote this poem. Mixed in with the papers was the flower he had sent a few days before, now withered. The Minister showed all of it to Omiya, and wept as he spoke of losing his daughter and of Genji's going away.

　"Tokonatsu" is another name for the pink, and by long usage it plays on the word for a bed. Here it is the bed they shared, and the dust settling on it gives the state of a bed no one uses. "Brushing away the dew" is the gesture of clearing dust or dew, with the wiping of tears folded in. Using the associations of the pink, he gathers his grief into one concrete place, and the poem answers the earlier one that likened the infant to a pink.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

With you gone, the dust has gathered on the wild pink— and brushing away the dew from it, how many nights shall I lie down alone

With you gone, the dust
has gathered on the wild pink—
and brushing away
the dew from it, how many
nights shall I lie down alone