九重にかすみへだてば梅の花
ただかばかりも匂ひこじとや
ただかばかりも匂ひこじとや
- Roma-ji
-
Kokonoe ni kasumi hedateba ume no hana
tada ka bakari mo nioi koji to ya - English Translation
-
If the ninefold mist
comes down and keeps us apart,
plum blossom, must I
not have even so much as
this, your fragrance, coming to me?
- Meaning
- If the ninefold mist comes down between us, plum blossom, am I not to have even so much as your fragrance?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Makibashira
Hearing that the Emperor had gone to her rooms, the Commander grew frantic and pressed for her withdrawal. She too felt wretchedly that things might happen which must not, and, with pretexts enough manufactured and her father the Minister smoothing the way, leave was granted at last. It was hard, the Emperor said; he must not put her husband off her going out again; and to think that his own claim, which came first, now lagged behind another's and had to court her favor. Seen close she was far beyond report, which made it harder still. The carriage was brought, the attendants of both houses fidgeted, and the Commander fussed about her noisily, and still the Emperor could not leave her side; complaining that so strict a guard was tiresome, he made this poem.
"Kokonoe," ninefold, is both many layers and the palace. "If the mist comes down between us" is her being shut away in the Commander's house. The plum blossom is Tamakazura. "Ka bakari," this much, plays on "ka," fragrance: if not your face, then at least your scent. The plum is the flower known by its scent above all, so that the whole plea—send me even a word—is gathered into "coming to me." The narrator says it is no great poem, and adds that, given the man who spoke it, it must have moved her all the same: the occasion counts for more here than the craft.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Why should it be that I dyed my heart so deeply in a purple that will not take the mordant, and is not to be come at all?
- This purple, whose true shade I never understood— with what great care, then, you must have gone about it, the dyeing of it for me
- At least let this scent be carried to you by the wind, even if I have no fragrance fit to stand beside the blossoms on the branch
- In this steady rain, this quiet spring rain falling through the long days—how, I wonder, do you remember the man of that old place?