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?

Meaning

To a heart still lost in a night that never dawns, which of these is the dream and which is not, that I could tell them apart?

Commentary

Part One: Akashi

　Akashi no Kimi answered his poem with this one. Taking over his word for dream, she says she cannot tell dream from waking in the first place. For a woman who has brooded so long on the distance in rank between them, what is happening in front of her does not feel real. After this poem their connection begins.

　"A night that does not dawn" is the state of a mind in the dark. "Madoeru" is still going astray. "Which of these is the dream" returns his own word. "To tell apart and say" is exactly that. He wished to half wake from a dream; she answers that she cannot see the waking world to begin with, and the two poems divide the word between them.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

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?

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?