Even on this day
no hand comes down to draw me—
the sweet flag that grows
hidden beneath the water,
whose root can only weep on
- Meaning
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Even today no hand comes down to draw me up: I am the sweet flag hidden under the water, whose root can only be carried off in weeping.
- Commentary
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Part One: Hotaru
It was the fifth of the Fifth Month, the day of the Sweet Flag. On his way to the riding grounds Genji looked in on Tamakazura, asking whether the Prince had stayed late and saying that he must not be allowed too close—he was a difficult man—and so, praising and disparaging by turns, gave her his cautions. He looked young and handsome as ever; the sheen and color of his robes seemed dyed by no hand of this world. Were it not for her trouble, she thought, he would be a man to delight in. Then a letter came from the Prince, on white thin paper in a hand of evident cultivation, tied to a sweet-flag root fine enough to be talked of, and it held this poem.
On the day of the festival people drew up sweet-flag roots and matched them for length and beauty. "No hand comes down to draw me" borrows that game to say that no one takes any notice of him. "Hidden beneath the water" is lying out of sight below the surface. The sweet flag is himself; "ne" plays on the plant's root and on the sound of weeping, and "nakare" on being carried off by water and on being made to weep. Every furnishing of the day is turned to complaint, and even the white paper was chosen to match the white root. The narrator, however, remarks drily that it seemed charming enough at the time, but set down here it is nothing out of the ordinary.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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Even the small fire
of a creature with no voice—
is that a thing that
another, reaching for it,
can put out at will, and quench?
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The firefly, that makes
no sound and only burns its
body quietly—
surely its fire runs deeper
than the fire of those who speak
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Brought up into sight,
it only looks the shallower—
that root, that weeping,
borne along and carried off
with no telling one from another
-
Even the horse, they
say, will not touch this grass—the
sweet flag at the edge
of the water. Was it drawn
up, then, only for today?