The light of the moon
is to be seen in the same
sky as it always was,
and it is from my own house
that the autumn has altered

Meaning

The moonlight is there in the same sky as always; it is from my own house that autumn has altered.

Commentary

Part Two: Suzumushi

　Genji answered the Reizei Emperor's poem with this one. The moon has not changed, he says; it is he who has—and with that he accepts the summons. He then took the princes and young nobles with him to the retired palace, where verse and music went on all night, and Reizei was greatly pleased that he had come. The chapter goes on from there to the Akikonomu Empress, who wishes to take vows out of concern for her mother's fate after death, and to Genji dissuading her.

　"The light of the moon" is moonlight. "The same sky" takes up Reizei's "above the clouds." "From my own house" gives the cause, the particle marking where a thing proceeds from. "Autumn has altered" says that the season is no longer what it was, and some read the word for autumn as sounding, here too, the sense of having had enough. Setting an unchanged moon against a changed self is something Genji's poems of these years do again and again, and here his awareness of age is stated plainly.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

The light of the moon is to be seen in the same sky as it always was, and it is from my own house that the autumn has altered

The light of the moon
is to be seen in the same
sky as it always was,
and it is from my own house
that the autumn has altered