Is it that you do
not know the deep thought burning
under the water,
that still the fishing-fire's light
keeps trembling in wild unrest?

Meaning

Is it that you do not know my deep thought burning under the water, that still the fishing-fire's light keeps trembling on the surface—and you go on grieving alone?

Commentary

Part One: Usugumo

　Genji answered Akashi no Kimi's poem with this one. When she said the fires and the hardship remained as they had been, he offered a reproach of his own. Against the old poem about the wretchedness of a body become the fire's reflection, burning below as it flows, he chides her that it is because she does not know his deep heart that she grieves alone. It being a quiet season, Genji turned his mind to solemn devotions and stayed more days than usual at Oi, so that she too, it is said, found her cares a little eased.

　"The deep thought that is not shallow" plays "shita," the water's floor, against the floor of the heart, meaning his own deep feeling for her; and the "hi" of "omohi" is fire, belonging to the flame. "Is it that you do not know" asks just that. "The fishing-fire's light" is the flame mirrored on the water, and "trembling in unrest" lays her own troubled solitude over the wavering light. Where she entrusted her wretched self to the fire, he brings out a deep thought burning beneath the water and answers that it is because she does not know his heart that she grieves alone, the two poems bound by the imagery of water and fire.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Is it that you do not know the deep thought burning under the water, that still the fishing-fire's light keeps trembling in wild unrest?

Is it that you do
not know the deep thought burning
under the water,
that still the fishing-fire's light
keeps trembling in wild unrest?