I have not forgotten
the hard joints of it, and yet
this bamboo shoot here—
this child—has turned out to be
a thing I cannot cast off

Meaning

I have not forgotten the hard passages of it, and yet this child has turned out to be a thing I cannot cast away.

Commentary

Part Two: Yokobue

　While the shoots sent by Suzaku were still in the Third Princess's rooms, Genji came to call. Kaoru, crawling about and mouthing a shoot with his new teeth, dribbling as he went, had a bearing already fine for so small a child, and was too winning to look away from. Knowing what he knew of the boy's birth, Genji still could not keep from lifting him up. This poem is very nearly spoken to himself. Afterward he saw the dead Kashiwagi in the child's face, set it beside his own life, and sank into thought.

　"The hard joints" are painful matters, and the word is also the node of a bamboo, so that it belongs with the plant. The bamboo itself is drawn out of the shoots that had been sent. "This" sounds the word for child, binding shoot and infant in a single syllable. Knowing the boy is another man's and saying flatly that he cannot cast him off, Genji sets a tangle of resentment and affection inside one image of bamboo.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

I have not forgotten the hard joints of it, and yet this bamboo shoot here— this child—has turned out to be a thing I cannot cast off

I have not forgotten
the hard joints of it, and yet
this bamboo shoot here—
this child—has turned out to be
a thing I cannot cast off