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

Meaning

These shore waves I cannot tell from the sound of one weeping with longing—is it because the wind blows from the quarter where my heart is?

Commentary

Part One: Suma

　Autumn at Suma came with a wind that stirred every thought, and the shore waves the poet Yukihira wrote of sounded close every night. Waking alone among the few sleeping men, propping his pillow to listen to the gale, Genji felt the surf breaking almost at his side, and wept until the pillow floated. He touched the koto and found the sound too desolate, broke off, and spoke this poem. The men woke, and could not keep from blowing their noses.

　"Koiwabu" is to suffer with longing. "Not to be told from weeping" lays the sound of the waves over his own crying. "The quarter I long for" is the capital. If the wind comes from there, he reasons, that is why the waves sound like weeping—an outward sound read as the projection of an inner one, and the poem that best represents the autumn scenes at Suma.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

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

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