海松や時ぞともなきかげにゐて
何のあやめもいかにわくらむ
何のあやめもいかにわくらむ
- Roma-ji
-
Miru ya toki zo to mo naki kage ni ite
nani no ayame mo ika ni wakuramu - English Translation
-
Living in a shade
that knows no season, like the
seaweed of the deep—
how is she to tell this day
from another, iris day?
- Meaning
- Living like seaweed in a shade that knows no season, how is she to tell this day from any other, on this day of irises?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Miotsukushi
Counting privately, Genji found that the fifth of the fifth month would be the child's fiftieth day. He regretted how splendidly she might have been celebrated in the capital, and sent a messenger with orders to arrive on the day itself. The man reached Akashi on the fifth with practical gifts and this poem. The letter also urged her to decide on coming up to the city, since things could not go on as they were. She answered.
"Miru" is a seaweed that grows in the shadow of rocks, standing for the child. "Knowing no season" is a life buried in the country. "Ayame" is telling one thing from another and also the iris of the fifth-day festival. "Ikani" is "how" and also the word for a fiftieth day. Festival plant and count of days are bound in a double pun, and a father worries over a child far from the ceremonial year of the capital.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Though I am not of the quarter the two who love each other lean toward, I shall be the one to go first, becoming smoke myself
- For whose sake was it that I went round this wretched world by sea and hill, a body that floats and sinks in tears that will not leave off
- The crane that cries out hidden away on an isle of no account here— today too there is no one to ask how it is with her
- Were it not even for the water rail's knocking startling me awake, how should I let the moonlight into a house so ruined?