あやなくも隔てけるかな夜をかさね
さすがに馴れし夜の衣を
さすがに馴れし夜の衣を
- Roma-ji
-
Ayanaku mo hedatekeru kana yo o kasane
sasuga ni nareshi yoru no koromo o - English Translation
-
For no cause at all
you have kept a wall between,
night piling on night,
and yet the robes of those nights
had grown familiar to us
- Meaning
- For no reason at all a wall has stood between us, night after night, though the robes of those nights had long grown familiar.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Aoi
Back at the Nijo residence, Genji found himself feeling something new before a Murasaki no Ue who had grown up entirely. Passing the days at go and at word games, he could bear it no longer, and one morning she alone did not rise. He slipped the inkstone box inside the curtains and went out, and in it was a folded note with this poem. Reading it she was appalled, and for some time afterward would not be easy with him.
"Ayanaku mo" means without reason, to no purpose. "The robes of the night" are the covers of a bed, standing for sleeping together. "Kept a wall between" is regret at having held back, that is, at having lain beside her all this while without acting. Nothing in it allows for what she might be ready for, and that this exchange has no reply says everything about the shock she received.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- That soul now gone is the sadder to me for this: this bed where we slept, and a heart so used to it that it cannot wander free
- 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
- For a good many years I have put on new robes of color this day, and putting one on, I feel as though tears were falling down
- Saying nothing of whether or not the year is a new one at all, what falls, and falls, are the tears of one who has grown old here