神人の手に取りもたる榊葉に
木綿かけ添ふる深き夜の霜
木綿かけ添ふる深き夜の霜
- Roma-ji
-
Kamibito no te ni torimotaru sakakiba ni
yū kakesouru fukaki yo no shimo - English Translation
-
On the sacred leaves
the shrine servants hold up now
in their own two hands,
white mulberry has been hung—
the frost of the deep night
- Meaning
- On the sacred branches the shrine servants hold up in their hands, white mulberry has been hung again—the frost of this deep night.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Wakana Ge
The Akashi Consort followed Murasaki no Ue's poem with this one. She takes the same frost and sets it not on the pines but on the sacred branches the shrine servants carry, so that the rite in front of her goes straight into the verse. For a woman who had come on this pilgrimage with her mother, the Akashi lady, and her grandmother the nun, the journey was also a journey into her family's past. Nakatsukasa followed with a third poem, and the set was closed.
"Shrine servants" are those in the god's service. The sacred branches are used at rites, and white mulberry was bound to them as a matter of course. "Hung again" is the adding of one thing to another: frost has settled on top of the cloth that is already there. Where the first poem saw the frost as the garland itself, this one has frost laid over real cloth, taking the same idea one step finer. As a poem in a set it carries the previous one forward and shifts the angle with a light hand.
- 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
- 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
- The frost, set down so that one takes it for the white mulberry they hang— is it not the plainest proof that the god is truly here
- Rising now to go, I cannot tell what sky lies ahead in this dark before dawn—and from where has the dew come that wets my sleeve