Could I have foreseen,
as the river's waves turn back,
that this cleansing rite
would find you worn and faded
in the wisteria of grief
- Meaning
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Could I ever have foreseen that, as the waves of the river turn and come again, this day of purification would find you worn thin in the wisteria drab of mourning?
- Commentary
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Part One: Otome
The year had turned, and the first anniversary of Fujitsubo's death had passed, so that the world laid aside its mourning colors. The change of robes was bright, and the season of the Kamo festival brighter still. But the lady Asagao, who had lost her father, Prince Shikibu, and left her post as High Priestess, sat idle and lost in thought. As the wind stirred fondly beneath the katsura tree before her rooms, her young women remembered the splendor of her years as priestess. Then a note came from Genji, asking how peacefully she must now be passing the day of purification. It was folded formally in purple paper and tied to a wisteria spray, arranged so that no one could mistake it for a love letter. Finding it apt to the season, the lady sent a reply; and afterward, when she put off mourning, Genji kept sending gifts of such thoughtfulness that her women, having no ground to refuse them, were quite at a loss.
"Could I have foreseen" is a rhetorical question: did I ever imagine it? I never did. "Turn back" plays on the waves of the river turning and on the day of purification coming round again. "Purification" holds both the Kamo rite she performed as priestess and the ablution that ends a term of mourning. "Fuji" plays on the wisteria flower and on the drab robes of mourning, and it also calls up "fuchi," the deep pool, an associate word of the river's waves; the conceit answers the wisteria spray to which the letter was tied. Setting the bright rite of her priestess years against the rite she must now perform in mourning for her father, the poem grieves at how her circumstances have changed. That it keeps entirely to the form of a condolence, with no love pressed openly upon her, shows how carefully Genji guarded against wounding her.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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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.
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Though I give myself
to the heart that longs for the
dead, will I but stray,
not seeing her, at the fords—
the three fords—of that river?
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The mourning robes went
on but yesterday, I thought,
and today already
the rite, the shallows—a world
that shifts and will not hold still
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Deep in the night's heart,
wild geese cross calling for friends,
and upon that cry
the wind along the reed tops
adds its own bitter sighing