荒れまさる軒のしのぶを眺めつつ
しげくも露のかかる袖かな
しげくも露のかかる袖かな
- Roma-ji
-
Aremasaru noki no shinobu o nagametsutsu
shigeku mo tsuyu no kakaru sode kana - English Translation
-
Gazing at the fern
that grows on eaves falling more
and more to ruin,
how thickly the dew comes down
and settles on these sleeves here
- Meaning
- Gazing at the fern on eaves that fall further into ruin, how thickly the dew comes down on these sleeves of mine.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Suma
From Hanachirusato too came a letter written as her sadness moved her. The unfamiliar hand had a freshness to it, and Genji was comforted by each of the letters he read, though they also fed his brooding. This poem was in hers. Reading it, he thought of a household with nothing but weeds to look after it, and sent word to his steward to have the place repaired.
"Aremasaru" is falling further into ruin. "Shinobu" is the fern growing on the eaves and also the verb for longing after someone, binding a decaying house and a longing heart in one word. "Shigeku" plays the thickness of growth against the frequency of tears. "Tsuyu" is dew for tears. Overgrowth turns directly into the measure of weeping, and the life of a woman who has lost her protector is stated entirely as landscape.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Into that small boat the people of Ise row over the waves' backs I would have climbed, had I not had this bitter weed to cut
- Among the driftwood the fisherfolk heap up, which is grief on grief here, how long shall I sit and gaze, soaked through, on Suma's own shore
- These waves on the shore, hard to tell from the sound of one who weeps, worn out with longing—is it that the wind blows here from where I long
- Are the first wild geese a line of the ones I long for, that their voices crying as they fly the sky of travel should be so sad