Locked fast under ice,
the water among the stones
can scarcely make way,
while the clear moon in the sky
sheds its light and flows on by.
- Meaning
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Locked fast under ice, the water among the stones can hardly move, while the clear moon in the sky sheds its light and flows on away.
- Commentary
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Part One: Asagao
On a snowy night Genji and Murasaki raised the blinds to gaze at the garden and spoke of one woman after another—the late Fujitsubo, and Oborozukiyo, the lady of Akashi, Hanachirusato. As Genji hinted at his feeling for the former priestess, Asagao, Murasaki's unease grew that his heart might turn elsewhere. Watching the moon come ever clearer, she put her heart into this poem. On its surface it sings the winter night's scene, but through its pivot-words it entrusts her aching feeling—of a self that cannot move, and of Genji whose heart shifts to other women.
"Locked under ice" is: sealed fast by ice. "The water among the stones" is the mountain stream running among the rocks, likened to herself. "Can scarcely make way" is to be checked, unable to flow, where "yuki" plays on "to go" and "to live." "The clear moon in the sky" is likened to Genji, where "sumu" plays on "to be clear" and "to dwell," that is, to visit or wed. "Its light flows on" plays "to flow" against "to be wept." Like water among the stones sealed by ice and unable to move, she stays fixed in place, while Genji, like the clear moon, lets his heart flow elsewhere—a lament entrusted to its pivot-words.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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This heart that never
learned its lesson from your old
coldness—it is this
that, joined to your cruelty now,
weighs on me all the harder.
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Why now, all anew,
should I let myself be seen?
A change of heart, they
say, is a thing that befalls
other people's lives—not mine.
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Gathering it all,
on a snow-threatening night
when the past is dear,
the mandarin duck at its
floating sleep adds its sad note.
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On a winter night,
no easy sleep, and waking
lonely—how brief was
that dream, all tangled and choked,
that came and was gone so soon.