旅ごろもうらがなしさにあかしかね
草の枕は夢もむすばず
草の枕は夢もむすばず
- Roma-ji
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Tabigoromo uraganashisa ni akashikane
kusa no makura wa yume mo musubazu - English Translation
-
In the traveller's robe,
for the sorrow of its hem,
I cannot hold out
till the dawn; on grass pillow
no dream will form itself here
- Meaning
- In this traveller's robe, for the sadness of its lining, I cannot hold out till dawn, and on a pillow of grass no dream will form.
- Commentary
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Part One: Akashi
Genji answered the novice's poem with this one, turning it aside lightly—one used to life by the bay can hardly be so lonely—while stating the loneliness on his own side. His relaxed manner as he spoke, the tale says, was beautiful past describing. Soon afterward he sent a letter to the daughter, and an awkward correspondence began.
"Tabigoromo" is a traveller's robe, working as a preface to "ura" and joining the lining of a garment to the underside of a heart. "Uraganashi" is a vague sadness, sounding the word for bay as well. "Akashi kane" is being unable to hold out till dawn, with the place-name in it—the same pun the novice had used, taken up directly. "No dream will form" is sleeplessness, and also suggests sleeping beside someone. Where the old man spoke of his daughter's loneliness, Genji answers with his own bed.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- Even the feeling of Awaji, that island seen and named as "ah"— it lights it with nothing left in shadow, this clear night moon
- Have you too come to know what sleeping alone is— how, with nothing to do, she passes night away in Akashi's lonely bay
- Weary with gazing into a cloud-realm where I know neither far nor near, I ask after the trees of the house they hinted at
- If she gazes too at the same cloud-realm you gaze into, then surely the feeling in her must be the very same as your own