九重に霧や隔つる雲の上の
月をはるかに思ひやるかな
月をはるかに思ひやるかな
- Roma-ji
-
Kokonoe ni kiri ya hedatsuru kumo no ue no
tsuki o haruka ni omoiyaru kana - English Translation
-
Is it mist that stands
between us in this ninefold
palace, that the moon
above the clouds should be so
far off when I think of it
- Meaning
- Is it mist that stands between us in this ninefold palace, that I must think of the moon above the clouds from so far off?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Sakaki
Home from Unrin-in, Genji talked with the Emperor of past and present, then went to pay his respects to Fujitsubo as she was withdrawing. The moon was bright, and he remembered how on such nights there had once been music; so much had changed within the same palace walls. Through Omyobu came this poem from her. He answered, and forgot his grievance long enough to let the tears fall.
"Kokonoe" is the palace. "Is it mist that stands between" is both the scene before her and the barrier between them. "The moon above the clouds" is Genji, so far away though they are under the same roof. Praising him as the moon while laying the impossibility of nearness on the mist, the poem holds a difficult balance: it refuses him and still lets feeling through.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- To speak of it is a thing to be feared, and yet this mulberry cord brings back to mind that autumn of the days that are long gone
- And that autumn, then— what was it that happened there, that a cord like this should be laid upon your heart and remembered as it is
- The light of the moon has not changed from autumns past of the world we knew, and it is the mist between that is hard and cruel here
- While I waited on, at every blowing of the withering wind, days of not knowing how you were have gone by, and gone by since