classic waka stream

心さへ空にみだれし雪もよに
ひとり冴えつるかたしきの袖
Roma-ji

Kokoro sae sora ni midareshi yukimoyo ni
hitori saetsuru katashiki no sode

English Translation
My heart, no less than
the sky, went astray that night
of the falling snow,
and the one sleeve spread beneath me
lay cold, and colder, alone
Meaning
My heart, no less than the sky, went astray in that night of falling snow, and the one sleeve spread beneath me lay cold and alone.
Commentary
Part One: Makibashira

　The Commander's wife was the eldest daughter of Prince Shikibu and Murasaki's half-sister. For years a spirit had tormented her, and he had come to shrink from her. On a snowy evening, as he made ready to go to Tamakazura, she helped him calmly and had incense burned into his robes; then, at the last moment, she rose suddenly, took the censer from under the basket-frame, and flung the ashes over him from behind. The fine ash went into his eyes and nose and filled his hair and clothes, and he could not go out. Her women pitied her, saying it was the spirit's doing; but he was thoroughly repelled. After a night of exorcisms, in a lull when she had fallen asleep, he sent this letter—explaining, falsely, that someone had suddenly collapsed and that the snow had kept him.

　"My heart, no less than the sky" is: not the weather only but my mind was in disorder. "Yuki mo yo" is snow coming steadily down. "Hitori," alone, is taken to play on "hitori," a censer—so that the very vessel of the ashes shadows the poem. "The one sleeve spread beneath" is the standard figure for sleeping alone. He wrote on thin white paper in keeping with the snow; but the narrator says that though the hand was weighty there was nothing much of grace in it, that his writing was plain, and that he was a man of Chinese learning. Tamakazura thought nothing of his absence and never looked at the letter, so no answer came, and he passed the day sick at heart.
Author
Murasaki Shikibu
Source
Genji Monogatari
Other