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?

Meaning

In this quiet spring rain falling through the long days, how do you remember, I wonder, the man of that old place?

Commentary

Part One: Makibashira

　The Second Month came. Genji thought how heartlessly the Commander had acted, and how galling it was to have been caught off guard, never supposing the thing would be done so decisively; and he thought of her constantly, and with a longing unbecoming in public. He knew the trouble was of his own making, and still she rose before him waking and sleeping. With so unpolished a man beside her she could not even be joked with, he told himself, and held back; but on a day of heavy rain and long quiet he went, for want of anything else, to the rooms where she had lived, and longing for the way she used to talk with him, he wrote. He sent it secretly to Ukon, but even so, fearing what she would make of it, he set down little and left the rest to be guessed. This is the poem.

　"Kakitarete" is rain coming steadily down. "The quiet spring rain" mirrors his own low spirits. "Furu" plays raining against growing old, and so leads into "furusato-bito," one of the old place—that is, himself. "How do you remember?" asks only that, without a word of open reproach. To leave the point unsaid and let the reader supply it matches the whole tone of the letter: a poem balanced very finely between the part of a foster father and the longing of a man.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

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?

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?