If only there were
someone to share close talk with,
that the dream I have
of this wretched world might come
half awake from itself here

Meaning

If only there were someone to talk softly with, so that this dream of a wretched world might half wake from itself.

Commentary

Part One: Akashi

　Arriving at the hillside house and finding her unwilling to respond, Genji went on speaking to her at length. This poem came then, less a declaration of love than a request for someone to share a mind with. She answered, and that night they became lovers.

　"Mutsugoto" is the easy talk of people close to each other. "Mogana" expresses a wish. "Uki yo" is this wretched world, meaning his life in exile. "That the dream might half wake" figures days in a place of banishment that hardly feel real. Though it is a lover's poem, its shape is a plea for rescue from solitude, and Genji's whole condition in this period is its content.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

How much do you feel, and in what measure—well now, how is it? Should one who has not yet seen your face be troubled by what she hears?
Moon-dappled horse of this autumn night, gallop up to the cloud-realm that I long for, so that I may see it even a moment
To a heart that goes astray in a night that has not yet come to dawn, which of these is dream and which is not, that it might be told?
Wet through with brine, I find myself weeping first of all—though the seaweed glimpsed in passing was no more than a fisher's idle sport

If only there were someone to share close talk with, that the dream I have of this wretched world might come half awake from itself here

If only there were
someone to share close talk with,
that the dream I have
of this wretched world might come
half awake from itself here