Since it is a love
that even the fisherfolk
burning on the shore
keep hidden, the smoke of it
smolders with nowhere to go

Meaning

Since even the fisherfolk who burn their fires on the shore keep this love hidden, its smoke smolders with nowhere to go.

Commentary

Part One: Suma

　Oborozukiyo answered his poem with this one, sending only a few words folded into Chunagon no Kimi's letter. Having been pardoned and returned to service at court, she could not correspond openly. That her feeling had not ended is all held in this one short poem.

　"Burning on the shore" is the fire of the salt-makers, taking up his "salt-burning fisherfolk." "Tsutsumu" is to keep something wrapped and hidden—a love conducted out of sight. "Kuyuru" plays smoke smoldering against regret. "Nowhere to go" says the feeling has no outlet. Fire and smoke alone are enough to state the closed condition of a love that cannot be acknowledged.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

That I long to see the seaweed of that shore where I have not learned yet, what will the fisherfolk who burn the salt make of it now
Making a trade of weeping until her sleeves drip, the fisherwoman grown old at Matsushima heaps her own griefs up as well
Set it beside the sleeve of the shore man who draws the brine, and compare: this night robe of mine, with all the sea-road lying between
Think, from that Suma shore where they say the sleeves drip brine, of the woman of Ise who cuts the weed and gathers her bitterness

Since it is a love that even the fisherfolk burning on the shore keep hidden, the smoke of it smolders with nowhere to go

Since it is a love
that even the fisherfolk
burning on the shore
keep hidden, the smoke of it
smolders with nowhere to go