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
- Meaning
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Deep in the night the wild geese cross the sky calling for their companions, and to that cry the wind along the tops of the reeds adds a sighing more bitter still.
- Commentary
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Part One: Otome
The Minister of the Center had learned of the childhood love between Yugiri and Kumoinokari, and the two were kept apart. Knowing that even letters would now be hard to send, Yugiri was wretched. He would not touch the food his grandmother pressed on him, and though he lay down as if to sleep, his mind was elsewhere; when the house had grown quiet he tried the partition door between their rooms. It was usually left unlatched, but now it was fastened tight, and not a sound came from beyond it. Leaning against it in his loneliness, he heard, through the wind rustling the bamboo, the faint crossing cry of geese. From the other side the girl, awake as well, murmured to herself, "Are the geese above the clouds as I am?"—and it was in answer to this that he made his poem. With her nurses lying close by, neither could speak aloud, and he could only go back to his grandmother's rooms and sigh. The next morning he wrote to her, but could not even reach Kojiju, who carried their letters, and the distance between them grew.
The "sa" of "sayonaka" is a prefix; the word means the depth of night. "Kari ga ne" is the cry of the wild goose, or the bird itself. Geese crossing the sky calling for their fellows are the very image of two people parted. "Utate" is an adverb meaning the more so, grievously, wretchedly; and it is the wind along the tops of the reeds that adds its sighing to that grief. Taking up her murmured "the geese above the clouds," he answers by laying the sound of the wind over the sound of the birds—a deft turn for one so young. Exchanged through a single sliding panel, the two utterances render the urgency of this love entirely through the sounds of an autumn night. It is from her murmur that night, too, that the girl comes to be called Kumoinokari, the goose above the clouds.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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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
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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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This sleeve of mine, dyed
deep in the crimson of tears—
is it to be named
and belittled as nothing
but the palest shade of green?
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In color on color
I come to know how hard it is,
this lot of mine—
in what dye, then, was it steeped,
this robe that is our bond?