秋の野の草の茂みは分けしかど
仮寝の枕結びやはせし
仮寝の枕結びやはせし
- Roma-ji
-
Aki no no no kusa no shigemi wa wakeshikado
karine no makura musubi ya wa seshi - English Translation
-
I did part my way
through the thick grasses of the
autumn field, and yet
did I ever knot the grass
into a pillow for sleep
- Meaning
- I did part my way through the thick grasses of the autumn field; but did I ever knot the grass into a pillow for the night?
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Yugiri
The Ichijo lady's letter reached Yugiri's house and was at once taken and hidden by Kumoinokari. He passed the night without seeing it, and only the next day, startled by the cicadas, did he get it back and read it. Realizing how thick the mist must lie at Ono, he wrote back in haste. This poem came with that answer. It was too late: the Ichijo lady died soon afterward, still believing he had turned away.
"The thick grasses of the autumn field" takes up her own meadow. "Did part my way through" grants that he went. "Knot the grass into a pillow" is the traveler's makeshift bed, and it stands for a night spent together. The close is a rhetorical question: he never did. He uses her scene unchanged and denies the fact of it—an honest answer, and one that arrived after there was anyone left to read it.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- It is in the damming that the shallowness will show, like a mountain stream— if the name that flows downstream cannot be kept wrapped up now
- Taking the meadow where the maidenflower droops for what sort of place, did you come and borrow it as lodging for a single night
- Knowing it for what, am I to give you comfort? Is it the living one you long for, or the one who is gone that grieves you so
- Which of them should I single out and dwell upon? In a world where dew that vanishes and forms again is not on grass blades alone