木枯の吹くにつけつつ待ちし間に
おぼつかなさのころも経にけり
おぼつかなさのころも経にけり
- Roma-ji
-
Kogarashi no fuku ni tsuketsutsu machishi ma ni
obotsukanasa no koro mo henikeri - English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- Waiting at every gust of the withering wind, I have let the days go by without ever knowing how you were.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Sakaki
Ever since he had heard the Controller murmur a line of Chinese verse aimed at him, Genji had felt the weight of public feeling and had let a long time pass without writing to Oborozukiyo. As the first winter showers came on, this poem arrived from her. Taken with both the season and the care she must have needed to write in secret, he kept the messenger, chose Chinese paper, took up a fresh brush, and wrote a reply.
"Kogarashi" is the hard wind of early winter. "At every blowing" is each gust—she has taken the sound for a visitor again and again. "Obotsukanasa" is not knowing how someone is. Some read a pun on the word for a robe, which would work with the wind. It voices a grievance without giving offense, and it has force enough to draw an answer.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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
- 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
- Do you take the tears of these days when we do not meet and I hold back for nothing more than the rain that falls from a common sky
- This day of parting has come round to us again, but the one I knew— when may I count on the time when I shall go and meet her