It is the old days
that I cannot forget first,
even as I stand
looking on the plain proof of
the god of Sumiyoshi

Meaning

It is the old days I cannot forget first of all, even as I stand here looking on the plain proof of the god of Sumiyoshi.

Commentary

Part Two: Wakana Ge

　The sacred music went on before the shrine all night, and morning came. The frost lay deeper and deeper, and everything was white. Amid the splendid procession and the sound of the instruments, the Akashi nun alone was going back over the years on the Akashi shore—sending her daughter to the capital, giving her granddaughter up to Murasaki no Ue, serving without ever being able to say who she was. This pilgrimage had answered all of it. She spoke this poem almost to herself. Afterward Murasaki no Ue and the others took the frost as their subject and sang in turn, and the scene turned toward brightness.

　"The old days" are the years at Akashi. "Cannot forget first" says that the past rises before the splendor in front of her. "The plain proof of the god" is the working of the god made visible. To have the memory of hardship come first while standing in the middle of a triumph is common to all the poems of this family, and it keeps the pilgrimage from being only a festival.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

It is the old days that I cannot forget first, even as I stand looking on the plain proof of the god of Sumiyoshi

It is the old days
that I cannot forget first,
even as I stand
looking on the plain proof of
the god of Sumiyoshi