Even from above
the clouds you have risen to,
turn and look back here:
I have had my fill at last
of this world where nothing holds

Meaning

Even from above the clouds you have risen to, turn and look back here: I have had my fill at last of this world where nothing holds.

Commentary

Part Two: Minori

　Genji answered the Akikonomu Empress's poem with this one. He calls to the woman who is gone, asking her to look back at him from above the clouds, and says outright that nothing here holds him any longer. It has the shape of a reply and is in fact addressed to Murasaki, which says a good deal about the state he is in. The chapter ends with him coming to the close of the year in his grief, and the tale moves on to the last chapter of his life.

　"The clouds you have risen to" is where the smoke of the pyre went, that is, where she is. "Turn and look back here" is a call to the dead. "Had my fill" carries the sound of the word for autumn and so takes up the Empress's season. "This world where nothing holds" is the impermanent world. A poem written as a reply drifts, as it goes, toward another addressee altogether, and the emptiness Genji is left with is there in the language itself.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other