涙のみ塞きとめがたき清水にて
ゆき逢ふ道ははやく絶えにき
ゆき逢ふ道ははやく絶えにき
- Roma-ji
-
Namida nomi sekitomegataki shimizu nite
yukiau michi wa hayaku taeniki - English Translation
-
Only tears will not
be dammed, like the clear spring there
at the barrier—
but the road where we might meet
had long since come to its end
- Meaning
- Only my tears will not be dammed, like the clear spring at the barrier gate; but the road on which we might have met came to its end long ago.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Wakana Jo
Oborozukiyo answered Genji's poem with this one. She grants the tears and tells him that the road on which they might meet has already ended—a plain refusal. He did not withdraw; he pushed the panel aside and reached her. Grieving that it had begun again, she met him for a time, and set her mind on following Suzaku out of the world.
"Will not be dammed" takes up his "can dam," and adding the clear spring makes the scene at the Osaka gate explicit. "The road where we might meet" is the road at that gate and also sounds the highway through Omi. "Long since come to its end" is flat and final. Receiving his associated words unchanged, granting the tears, and then cutting him off with the road—the reply holds feeling and refusal together in one poem, and does it with skill.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- If the world you left lies still uneasy behind, then do not force your way free of the tether that is so hard to part from now
- With all of those years set between us, I have come to Meeting Hill—yet how little I can dam them, these tears that keep on falling
- I have not forgotten those years I lay sunk away, and even so, not learning, I could throw myself into this house's wisteria
- The pool you would throw yourself into is no true pool at all, and so I shall take no more of these unchastened waves upon me