Even if it should
remember us as those who
knew it long—on what
grounds could we stay on here now,
pillar of cypress, and remain?
- Meaning
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Even if it remembers us as those who knew it long, on what grounds could we stay on here now, pillar of cypress?
- Commentary
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Part One: Makibashira
Since the girl was weeping too hard to finish, her mother said, "Come," and made this poem. The women in attendance were sad each in her own way, and looked even at trees and grasses they had never thought about, saying how they would long for them once gone, and sniffled together. Then the carriages were brought round; and looking back, feeling that they would never see the place again, they kept their eyes on the treetops and turned to look until it was out of sight.
"Known it long" repeats her daughter's phrase exactly. "On what grounds could we stay" is a rhetorical question: there is no ground; there is no longer a place for us here. The child had begged the pillar not to forget her, and the mother answers by denying the attachment outright—the same technique of reversing a poem's sense with its own words, used here not to console but to make her let go. In these lines the hardness of a woman leaving the house of many years without allowing herself sentiment, and the depth of what lies under it, exist together.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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When I turn over
what happened, my heart is stirred,
and this way and that
the smoke of my regretting
rises thicker than before
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Though I leave this house
now, saying that all is over,
you, pillar of cypress
that I have known so long—do not,
do not forget me here
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Shallow though it is,
the water among the stones
runs clear and stays on—
while she who kept this house must
go, and be parted from it
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However it may be,
the water among the rocks
is bound fast and still—
and I see nothing here that could
hold me, or keep me either