Suminoe no matsu ni yo fukaku oku shimo wa
kami no kaketaru yūkazura kamo

English Translation

The frost that has come
deep in the night to settle
on Suminoe's pines—
is it a garland of white
mulberry the god has hung

Meaning

The frost that settled deep in the night on the pines of Suminoe—can it be a white mulberry garland the god himself has hung there?

Commentary

Part Two: Wakana Ge

　At daybreak the frost lay white on the Sumiyoshi pines and the whole place looked touched by the gods. After the nun's reflection, the women took the frost as their subject and answered one another in turn. Murasaki no Ue went first with this poem, seeing the frost on the pines as a garland hung there by the god, and reading it as a sign that the pilgrimage had been accepted. The Akashi Consort and the gentlewoman Nakatsukasa followed on the same scene, so that three poems were sung together. The pilgrimage closes on that bright note, and the tale returns to daily life at the Rokujo residence.

　"Deep in the night" is while the night is still far from over. The garland is made of white mulberry fiber and hung on the head or on a sacred branch at rites. Seeing white frost as white mulberry cloth is the whole point of the poem, and it takes the natural scene straight as the god's own doing. The closing particle asks rather than states, and by not insisting it conveys awe all the better. It is a formal landscape poem, pitched exactly right for the occasion.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Suminoe no matsu ni yo fukaku oku shimo wa kami no kaketaru yūkazura kamo

Suminoe no matsu ni yo fukaku oku shimo wa
kami no kaketaru yūkazura kamo