ことならば馴らしの枝にならさなむ
葉守の神の許しありきと
葉守の神の許しありきと
- Roma-ji
-
Koto naraba narashi no eda ni narasanamu
hamori no kami no yurushi ariki to - English Translation
-
If it comes to that,
let me be made familiar
as the twinned branches,
saying that the leaf-guarding
god had given me his leave
- Meaning
- If it comes to that, let me be made as familiar as the twinned branches, on the word that the leaf-guarding god had given me his leave.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Kashiwagi
In the Fourth Month Yugiri came again to the Ichijo residence. Deutzia was spilling white over the garden, an oak and a maple had grown together with their branches crossing, and the young leaves were coming into their green. Looking at the oak, Yugiri thought of his dead friend's name, and while making his excuse of the charge laid on him, he quietly put forward what he felt for the Princess herself. This poem was spoken then. She did not answer; the gentlewoman Shosho no Kimi replied for her and turned the offer gently aside.
"If it comes to that" is as much as to say, since matters stand so. "The twinned branches" are boughs that have grown together into one, and the verb also means to become familiar with someone. "The leaf-guarding god" is the spirit that lives in a tree and keeps its leaves, said to dwell in the oak—and here it is the dead Kashiwagi. Finding in the garden a tree that bears his friend's name and then claiming that tree's god has given him leave, Yugiri argues his way closer: the poem shows exactly the kind of reasoning he uses.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Even the dead man cannot have thought of it—that, casting you aside, he would leave you to put on this haze of the evening
- How it galls me—that, leaving this robe of haze for someone else to wear, the blossom should have fallen even before the spring did
- Though the leaf-guarding god may no longer dwell in the oak, is this a treetop at our house that should be made familiar with men
- Though you come after me on the road I have taken, parting from this world, seek out the same place, you too, where I am bound at the end