Grieving a parting
from one so newly met is
your pretext, and yet
is it not toward the one
you long for that you would go?

Meaning

Grief at parting from someone so newly met is your pretext—is it not the one you long for that you would follow?

Commentary

Part One: Miotsukushi

　The woman who was to be the nurse answered his poem with this one. Regret at parting is only the surface, she says; his heart is turned toward Akashi. Genji thought the practised turn of it admirable. She went down to Akashi and became, as the child's nurse, one of the links between that shore and the capital.

　"Uchitsuke" is abrupt, of the moment, naming how shallow their acquaintance is. "Kagoto" is a pretext. "The quarter he longs for" is where Akashi no Kimi is. "Would he not follow?" is a rhetorical question. Rather than let his banter pass, she names what lies behind it, and the ready wit trained in service becomes the poem itself.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Turning back, shall I lay some complaint at your door? After you drew near and were gone, the sleeve of mine was slow indeed to grow dry
We had not grown used to being close, with nothing held back between us, and yet the parting itself turns out to be hard to bear
How soon may I lay my sleeve across her—the rock that the heavenly maiden strokes as ages pass, and the years still to come here
Stroking her alone, my sleeve has not the breadth for what it must cover; I wait for a shade that would spread wide enough to cover

Grieving a parting from one so newly met is your pretext, and yet is it not toward the one you long for that you would go?

Grieving a parting
from one so newly met is
your pretext, and yet
is it not toward the one
you long for that you would go?