I have not forgotten
those years I lay sunk away,
and even so, not
learning, I could throw myself
into this house's wisteria

Meaning

I have not forgotten the years I lay sunk at Suma, and even so I have learned nothing: I could throw myself into the wisteria pool of this house.

Commentary

Part Two: Wakana Jo

　Even after he had reached her past the barrier, Genji kept coming. Wisteria was beginning to bloom in the garden, and the old flower banquet once held at this house came back to him. He spoke this poem then: he knows that this was the affair that sent him into exile, and says he still cannot keep away. She answered to turn his ardor aside, but the meetings went on for a time. In the end she resolved to take vows, and what lay between them closes in the following chapter.

　"Lay sunk away" is the years adrift at Suma and Akashi, and sinking in water leads to the word for a deep pool. "Not learning" folds the place-name Suma into the phrase for being unchastened, a play these two have used since the Suma chapter. "Wisteria" hangs in clusters and puns on that pool. Sinking, pool, wave, wisteria run through the poem as waterside associations, and inside them he says that, knowing what it cost him, he would go in again.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

I have not forgotten those years I lay sunk away, and even so, not learning, I could throw myself into this house's wisteria

I have not forgotten
those years I lay sunk away,
and even so, not
learning, I could throw myself
into this house's wisteria