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
- Meaning
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At least let this scent be carried to you on the wind, though I have no fragrance fit to stand beside the blossoms on the branch.
- Commentary
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Part One: Makibashira
This is her reply. The Emperor said that he would gladly have sat out the night for love of the place, but that he felt for the man who would grudge it; and how, he wondered aloud, was he to send to her now?—which she found almost too gracious to bear. That she did not wholly turn from him moved him, and he went away looking back again and again. Afterward the Commander took her straight to his own house.
"Ka bakari" is his own word, used here for the scent alone. "Let the wind carry it" is: at least let there be word between us. "The blossoms on the branch" are the ladies of the palace, beside whom she disclaims any standing. Using the plum's scent and the flowering branch exactly as he had set them out, she offers the scent and withdraws on the question of rank—two moves in one. She neither refuses him nor promises anything. That balance is her answer.
- Author
-
Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
-
Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
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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
-
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?
-
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?
-
Lost in the long rain,
my sleeves wet through with the drops
that fall from the eaves—
how should there be a moment,
brief as foam, when I forget?