年暮れて岩井の水もこほりとぢ
見し人影のあせもゆくかな
見し人影のあせもゆくかな
- Roma-ji
-
Toshi kurete iwai no mizu mo kōritoji
mishi hitokage no ase mo yuku kana - English Translation
-
The year comes to its
end, the rock spring's water too
is bound shut with ice,
and the faces we once saw
are fading away as well
- Meaning
- The year ends, the water of the rock spring is sealed with ice, and the face we used to see is fading from us too.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Sakaki
After Genji's poem, Omyobu, who served Fujitsubo, spoke this one. Many more poems passed, the text says, but not enough to be worth setting down. Fujitsubo left the palace she knew for the Sanjo residence, thinking back over the years since she had last lived away from court. The new year came in quietly, and Genji too kept indoors in low spirits.
"Iwai" is a spring welling between rocks. "Sealed with ice" carries forward the frozen pond of Genji's poem. "Aseyuku" is to fade, to lose color, so that a reflection sealed under ice and a memory growing dim are laid together. From the vantage of one who serves, the poem grieves that the memory of the late Emperor is being lost.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- That pine we relied on for the breadth of its shade— has it withered then? Here at year's end the lower leaves are going, one by one
- In the clear surface of this pond, a mirror froze over and cloudless, not to see the face that I used to see is a sad thing
- It is my own heart that wets my sleeves on both counts— and this too, this voice that calls out to let us know the night is breaking open
- Am I to pass all of this life of mine like this, grieving as I go, with never once an hour when the heart in me may be eased