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?

Meaning

Lost in the long rain, my sleeves wet through with the drops from the eaves—how should there be a moment, brief as foam, when I do not remember you?

Commentary

Part One: Makibashira

　Ukon showed it to her when no one was by, and she wept. As the months passed she thought of him more, not less; but being his foster daughter she could not say aloud that she missed him, or ask how they might meet, and it grieved her. That she had once found his attentions oppressive she had never told even Ukon, so she kept it to herself—though Ukon had guessed something, and still could not make out what had passed between them. Saying that it was presumptuous to write and worse not to, Tamakazura set down this poem, and closed with great propriety.

　"Nagame" plays the long rain against gazing in thought. "The drops from the eaves" is rain falling from the roof; "utakata" is foam, and also the briefest moment. Drops, wetting, foam—all belong to the long rain, so that the whole poem is woven from it. Where his poem tied rain and self together with the single word "furu," hers piles up the words of the scene, and the rhetorical "how should there be" turns denial into strong affirmation. Yet there is not one word of love in it: she writes throughout as a daughter. Genji spread the letter open and wept as the drops fall from the eaves, and taking up the Japanese koto remembered how her fingers had sounded on it.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

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?

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?