うちつけの別れを惜しむかごとにて
思はむ方に慕ひやはせぬ
思はむ方に慕ひやはせぬ
- Roma-ji
-
Uchitsuke no wakare o oshimu kagoto nite
omowamu kata ni shitai ya wa senu - English Translation
-
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