At a house gone wild
where no one comes to see it,
it is the orange
bloom alone that has become
the eaves' one reason to call

Meaning

At this neglected house where no one comes, it is the orange blossom alone that has given the eaves a reason to be visited.

Commentary

Part One: Hanachirusato

　The Reikeiden Consort answered his poem with this one. If he has come to a house no one visits, she says, it must be the orange blossom's doing—thanks and a statement of her own solitude in the same breath. Genji thought again that though she was never a woman who stood out, she was unlike the rest. Afterward he went quietly to the sister in the west wing, and the chapter closes there.

　"No one comes to see it" describes how she has lived since the Emperor's death. "A house gone wild" is one no longer kept up. "The orange blossom" takes up his own word and returns it, as the exchange required. "Tsuma" is an edge—the eaves—and also plays on the sense of something that draws a person in. Glad of the visit and saying all the same that it was the flower that brought him, the poem shows her character exactly.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

At a house gone wild where no one comes to see it, it is the orange bloom alone that has become the eaves' one reason to call

At a house gone wild
where no one comes to see it,
it is the orange
bloom alone that has become
the eaves' one reason to call