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?

Meaning

In one thing after another I am made to feel how hard my lot is—in what dye, I wonder, was this bond of ours ever steeped?

Commentary

Part One: Otome

　This is her answer to his poem of protest. But before she could finish speaking it her father came in, and she had no choice but to withdraw to her rooms. That night, lying in his own room, Yugiri heard the sound of three carriages setting out quietly for the Minister's house. Though his grandmother sent for him, he lay as if asleep and would not stir, and passed the night with his tears never stopping. With this unfinished poem, the childhood love of the two is broken off, and they are long kept apart.

　"Iro-iro ni" means in one thing after another, and it sounds the word for color as an associate of "to dye." "Mi no uki hodo" is her own hard lot, her station that will not yield to her wishes; "shiraruru" is to be made to know without willing it. "Naka no koromo," the robe between them, renders their bond as a garment, again an associate of dyeing. Where he had grieved over shades of color as degrees of rank, she turns color to the bond itself and asks in what dye it was ever steeped. She neither consoles him nor reproaches him, only laments that their fate is unreadable, and in that helplessness her youth and candor show. That her father's entrance cuts the poem short is itself the shape of the uncertainty before them.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

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?

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?