Could I hear of your
fisher's life as a thing apart?
The one who let fall
brine at the shore of Suma
was no other man than I

Meaning

Could I hear of your new life as a thing apart from me? The one who wept out his salt at the shore of Suma was no other than myself, and for your sake.

Commentary

Part Two: Wakana Ge

　Oborozukiyo, known as the Mistress of Staff of the Nijo house, had kept her tie with Genji even after Suzaku left the world; but since their meeting in the preceding chapter she had come to see how dangerous it was. In time she quietly took vows. Genji learned of it only afterward, through others, and sent this poem, hurt that she had not told him. He reaches all the way back to the exile at Suma that his love for a political enemy's daughter had brought on him—a sign of how far apart this woman stood, to the end, from the others. With this exchange their long connection closes.

　"Your fisher's life" is the life of one who works the shore, and the word sounds "nun," meaning what she has become. "As a thing apart" is a rhetorical question: he could not possibly hear it so. "Let fall brine" comes from the dripping of seawater in salt-making and means weeping. "No other man than I" says that it was for her and no one else. Seaside associations run through the whole while the reproach goes back to the cause of the exile, calling up a long stretch of years in a single breath.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Could I hear of your fisher's life as a thing apart? The one who let fall brine at the shore of Suma was no other man than I

Could I hear of your
fisher's life as a thing apart?
The one who let fall
brine at the shore of Suma
was no other man than I