Out on open sea,
with no knowing whence we came
nor where we are bound—
ah, toward what quarter now
are we to long for you?
- Meaning
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We have rowed out onto open water, knowing neither where we came from nor where we are bound—ah, toward what quarter are we to turn and long for you?
- Commentary
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Part One: Tamakazura
This is the answering poem to her sister's; each, we are told, spoke her heart in this way. Once they had passed the Cape of Kane, a line from an old poem—"I shall not forget"—became their waking and sleeping refrain; and when they reached Dazaifu the distance from the capital weighed on them the more, so that they wept and made the girl their mistress and passed their days about her. Very rarely the nurse saw Yugao in a dream, with a woman beside her dressed as on that night, and she would wake unwell; and so she came at last to think her lady must indeed be gone from the world, which was bitter to her.
"Koshikata" is the direction one has come from, and also the past; "yukue" is where one is bound, and also the future. On the sea no track is left behind, and neither past nor future can be made out. "Aware" is a cry of grief, and "toward what quarter are we to long for you" asks in what direction their yearning should turn. For a heart that longs after someone whose life and whereabouts are alike unknown, there is not even a direction to face. The poem lays the loneliness of a sea passage directly over the state of those who have lost their mistress. Its "knowing neither whence nor where" answers, in the outward voyage, the poem Tamakazura will make on the return—"out on a sea road whose end cannot be seen"—so that the two boat songs echo each other across the years.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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