年をへてまつしるしなきわが宿を
花のたよりにすぎぬばかりか
花のたよりにすぎぬばかりか
- Roma-ji
-
Toshi o hete matsu shirushi naki waga yado o
hana no tayori ni suginu bakari ka - English Translation
-
These years I waited
and no sign came of it—my
house you pass beside
only because the flowers
gave you occasion to come
- Meaning
- All these years I waited and nothing came of it; do you pass by my house only because the flowers gave you the occasion?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Yomogiu
Suetsumuhana answered his poem with this one. The quiet stir of her movement and the scent of her sleeves made Genji think she had grown into herself since the old days. As the moon went down its light came in freely, for there was no gallery or eave left to block it, and he could see the furnishings unchanged from years before. That she had passed all this time in the same state moved him deeply. Afterward he had the mugwort cleared and the fencing repaired, and two years later moved her to the eastern wing of the Nijo estate.
"Toshi o hete" is over the passing years. "Matsu" takes up his own pun on pine and waiting. "Shirushi naki" is to no purpose, turning his word for a sign back on him. "Occasion of the flowers" asks whether he stopped only because the wisteria drew him. She takes over every word he used and reverses the sense alone—an unusually direct reproach from this woman.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Seek it out I shall— I of all men will go in and ask after it: the heart of old at the root of mugwort too deep for paths
- The wisteria waves seemed hard to pass on by— it was the pine, and the waiting, that were the sign this house had been keeping here
- Going out and now coming back, these tears of mine that will not be dammed— do people take them for the spring that never runs dry here?
- Meeting you by chance on the road to Omi, I put my trust in it, and still nothing came of it— a sea with no shells nor salt