逢ふ瀬なき涙の河に沈みしや
流るる澪の初めなりけむ
流るる澪の初めなりけむ
- Roma-ji
-
Ause naki namida no kawa ni shizumishi ya
nagaruru mio no hajime narikemu - English Translation
-
Was it sinking down
into that river of tears
with no shoal to meet,
that made the beginning of
the channel I drift along
- Meaning
- Was it my sinking into that river of tears, where no shallows brought us together, that began the channel down which I am carried now?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Suma
While settling his affairs, Genji contrived to send a letter to Oborozukiyo. It was this affair that had brought him to exile, and though he knew she had reason not to write, he could not keep the reproach out of it. This poem went with that letter. She was deeply shaken and answered through tears she could not hold back.
"Ause" is a lovers' meeting, and "se," a shoal, works within the river imagery. "The river of tears" is an old conventional figure. "Mio" is the channel where water runs, a word also used for its sound suggesting the ruin of a self. Here it is his own drifting condition told as a current. The chain from a lover's tears to an actual sentence of exile is built entirely out of words associated with water.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- Narrow though it be, this sleeve where the moonlight has come to lodge itself, I would hold and still watch on a light there is no end to
- The moonlight, going its round, will come at the last to shine clear again— do not gaze on at a sky where it is clouded a while
- The bubble afloat on the river of tears will surely vanish soon, not waiting for the shallows that come after the current
- The ones I once knew are gone, and those who remain grieve—at the world's end I pass my days weeping, with nothing gained by leaving it