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

Meaning

Do you take the tears of these days apart, when I hold myself back, for no more than the showers of an ordinary sky?

Commentary

Part One: Sakaki

　Genji answered her poem with this, taking some trouble over it. The women in attendance nudged each other over the elegance of it—the Chinese paper, the freshly chosen brush—wondering whom it could be for. The text notes that there were many such correspondences, and that Genji answered them all civilly enough without any of it reaching him deeply.

　"Not meeting" is plain enough; "shinoburu" carries both enduring and keeping out of sight. "The showers of a common sky" takes up the season of her poem. Asking that one's tears not be confused with seasonal rain is a standard move in a love poem; what the scene is actually about is the elegance with which the standard move is executed.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

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

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