心からかたがた袖を濡らすかな
明くと教ふる声につけても
明くと教ふる声につけても
- Roma-ji
-
Kokoro kara katagata sode o nurasu kana
aku to oshiuru koe ni tsukete mo - English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- It is my own heart that wets my sleeves on this side and that—and this voice too, calling out that day has come.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Sakaki
Oborozukiyo had become Mistress of the Household and lived brilliantly at court, but her secret meetings with Genji went on as before. Watching for a gap while the Emperor kept a fast during the Rites of the Five Altars, Genji slipped into the same gallery room as before. As the light began to come, a night guard was heard calling the hour, and she spoke this poem. He answered, and left in some disquiet.
"Kokoro kara" means the cause is her own heart—she lays it on no one else. "Katagata" is on this side and that, several reasons at once: the joy of the meeting, the grief of parting, the fear that attends a forbidden love. "The voice that says day has come" is the guard calling the watch, taking the sound of the room into the verse. Under a fragile manner, an exact awareness of her own position shows.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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
- 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
- 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
- If this hardness of our meeting is not something bounded by today, then how many lives to come must I go on grieving through