It does not so much
as show me the vanished one's
reflection—flowing
unconcerned, and at its ease,
this shallow garden stream
- Meaning
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It will not even show me the vanished one's reflection, but flows unconcerned and at its ease, this shallow garden stream.
- Commentary
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Part One: Fujiura
This is Kumoinokari's reply. She too, mourning the grandmother who had raised her, made her poem by way of the stream. As their exchange was ending, the Chancellor—the former Minister of the Center, her father—stopped at the Sanjo house on his way from the palace, drawn by the color of the maples. Finding the place little changed from the days when his own parents lived, and everything settled and well kept, he was deeply moved; and coming upon the practice poems scattered about, he was overcome with tears.
"The vanished one" takes up Yugiri's poem and means the Princess. "Does not so much as show her reflection" is: it will not even give her image back to the water. "Tsurenaku" is unconcerned, unfeeling. "At its ease" is flowing comfortably, as if the stream owned the place. "Isarai" is a small shallow flow—here the garden stream. Behind it lies an old poem about a stream that does not even show the dead one's shadow. Where her husband asked the clear water for news of the dead, she answers, a little reproachfully, that the water shows nothing and flows on indifferent. Looking at the same stream, he speaks to it, she laments its unfeeling; and at the summit of their happiness they mourn the grandmother together—an exchange full of feeling.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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