をちこちも知らぬ雲ゐにながめわび
かすめし宿の梢をぞとふ
かすめし宿の梢をぞとふ
- Roma-ji
-
Ochikochi mo shiranu kumoi ni nagamewabi
kasumeshi yado no kozue o zo tou - English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- Weary of gazing into a cloud-realm where I can tell neither far from near, I come asking after the treetops of the house you hinted at.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Akashi
Having heard the novice out, Genji took the opening and sent a letter to the house on the hillside. It pricked him a little that Yoshikiyo had long had hopes there, but he took up his brush to see how matters stood. This poem went with that first letter. The daughter would not so much as pick it up, and her father composed the reply in her place.
"Ochikochi" is far and near, that is, no sense of direction or distance. "Kumoi" is the cloudy sky, used in earlier chapters for the capital and for heights out of reach. "Nagamewabi" is to gaze and grow weary with longing. "The house that was hinted at" takes up the novice's words. "Asking after the treetops" is an indirect way of calling on someone without saying so.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Have you too come to know what sleeping alone is— how, with nothing to do, she passes night away in Akashi's lonely bay
- 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
- 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
- How the heart is closed and troubled with what it holds— and there is no one to say, well now, how is it with you, and ask after me