海人舟にいかがは思ひおくれけむ
明石の浦にいさりせし君
明石の浦にいさりせし君
- Roma-ji
-
Amabune ni ikaga wa omoiokurekemu
Akashi no ura ni isari seshi kimi - English Translation
-
How is it that you
fell behind the fisher's boat?
You were the one who
went out fishing, after all,
there at the shore of Akashi
- Meaning
- How is it that you fell behind the fisher's boat? You were the one, after all, who went out fishing at the shore of Akashi.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Wakana Ge
Oborozukiyo answered Genji's poem with this one. She notes that it is she who has gone first, and against his talk of weeping at Suma she asks what he was doing at Akashi, where he found another woman. The wit has not dulled in all the years, and it makes a fitting last exchange between them. Genji showed the letter to Murasaki no Ue as well, to make plain that this tie was now entirely broken. The tale then moves on to Suzaku's fiftieth-year celebration and to Kashiwagi's decline.
"The fisher's boat" is a boat that goes out to fish, and "fisher" sounds "nun," so that taking vows is put as boarding a boat. "Fell behind" is being second, and it refers to which of them left the world first. "Went out fishing" is casting for a catch, and it points quietly to his taking the Akashi lady during those years. She receives every one of his seaside words and then casts doubt on the claim about Suma itself. Among the poems she gives him, this is one of the sharpest.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- And how does the house that waits for me hear it too? On this side and that it sets the heart astir, this voice of the evening cicada
- 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
- The smoke that will rise when I burn, saying now it ends—even that smoke will not clear, and the longing that does not end will remain
- Let me rise beside you and go out with the smoke, since we are matching smoke against smoke, the trouble that leaves us both in disorder