わたつ海にしづみうらぶれ蛭の子の
脚立たざりし年はへにけり
脚立たざりし年はへにけり
- Roma-ji
-
Watatsuumi ni shizumi urabure hiru no ko no
ashi tatazarishi toshi wa henikeri - English Translation
-
Sunk in the great sea
and fallen into grief here,
like the leech-child who
could not stand upon his legs,
I have let the years go by
- Meaning
- Sunk in the great sea and brought low, like the leech-child who could not stand on his legs, I have let the years pass.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Akashi
Back in the capital and raised to Provisional Grand Counselor, Genji was summoned to court. The Suzaku Emperor came out in robes chosen with particular care, and their quiet talk went on into the night. Under a still fifteenth-night moon, when the Emperor remarked that it had been long since they made music together or heard the old pieces, Genji offered this poem. The Emperor received it with feeling and with shame, and answered.
"Watatsu umi" is the great sea. "Uraburu" is to be brought low, to lose heart. "The leech-child" is the child born to Izanagi and Izanami who, being imperfect, was set adrift in a reed boat. Genji lays that myth over his own case: a brother sent away. As an appeal to a sovereign it goes remarkably far, and two years and more of exile are gathered into the phrase about legs that would not hold.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Weary of the world, I have become one soaked through with brine these many years on this shore—and even so I cannot leave this bank
- Could it fall short of the grief of that spring when I went out from the town— this autumn in which I part from a shore grown old with years
- Since there comes a time of meeting again, as they met going around the shrine pillar—do not keep the grudge of that parting spring
- Does the morning mist rise up on Akashi bay, where you pass the night through in your grieving? So my thoughts go out to you from here