Unlooked for, the road
that runs through Ide divides us;
yet I go on loving,
saying nothing of it—loving
the flower of the yamabuki
- Meaning
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Unlooked for, the road through Ide divides us; and still, saying nothing of it, I go on loving the kerria flower.
- Commentary
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Part One: Makibashira
In the Third Month, looking at the wisteria and kerria in their evening light before the Rokujo house, Genji thought only of how good it had been to see her there. He left the spring quarter and went across to the summer one where she had lived. The color of the kerria spilling, as if by no design, over the bamboo hedge was very fine. He murmured a line about dyeing one's robe in the color of the gardenia—the flower whose name means "mouthless"—that is, of keeping love unspoken; and then made this poem, adding "and I see her face"; but there was no one to hear. Only now did he feel how far off she had gone. A strange indulgence of the heart, the narrator remarks.
"Omowazu ni" is unexpectedly. "Ide" is the village in Yamashiro famous for its kerria; "the middle road" that runs through it stands for the distance between them. "Loving without saying" is love kept silent. The kerria is Tamakazura, and since the flower belongs to Ide the place and the plant join of themselves. Behind the kerria stands the gardenia color of the line he had just murmured, so that the theme—loving and saying nothing—is doubly fixed. He neither sends the poem nor writes it down but says it aloud where no one hears, and that alone tells how alone he is by now.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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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?
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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?
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Of the eggs that came
out of one nest together,
one is nowhere seen—
and in whose hand, I wonder,
is it being held so close?
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This egg of the wild
duck, hidden away in the nest
and of no account—
who would take such a thing and
hide it anywhere at all?