Will the parting from
the one already dead grow
further still, unless
it be in that cloud-realm where
she rose and became the smoke

Meaning

Will our parting from the dead grow further still—unless it be in that sky where she rose as smoke?

Commentary

Part One: Suma

　Omiya answered his poem with this one. If he goes to Suma seeking her daughter's smoke, she says, he will not find her short of the sky that smoke went up into: consolation that refuses to console. Those who saw him off wept until the aftermath seemed almost ill-omened. Genji then returned to the Nijo residence to take leave of Murasaki no Ue.

　"The one already dead" is Aoi no Ue. "Hedataramu" is the widening of a distance: with Genji gone far off, even the dead daughter seems to recede. "Kumoi" is the sky where the clouds are, where the smoke of the pyre went. He had used smoke to link two places; she answers that only the sky itself could link them, and by refusing the consolation she shows how deep the grief goes.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Will the parting from the one already dead grow further still, unless it be in that cloud-realm where she rose and became the smoke

Will the parting from
the one already dead grow
further still, unless
it be in that cloud-realm where
she rose and became the smoke