On this day at least,
when the summer robes have been
cut and changed anew,
will the old remembering
not come forward of itself

Meaning

On this day at least, when the summer robes have been cut and changed, will the old remembering not come forward of itself?

Commentary

Part Two: Maboroshi

　In the Fourth Month came the change of clothes. Hanachirusato sent Genji his summer robes and added this poem. She had lived for years in the summer wing at Rokujo as one of his wives, with no share in the house's brilliance and no change in her steadiness, and she and Murasaki no Ue had passed all those years without a quarrel. She mourns her quietly. Genji answered, using the thinness of the cloth to speak of how little the world holds. His year is marked out by exchanges like this one, at the turns of the seasons.

　"Summer robes" are the thin clothes of the season. "Cut and changed" is recutting cloth for new garments, and the verb belongs with the robe. "On this day at least" is asking for that much. "The old remembering" is thinking of the dead. The closing is a question. She uses an annual custom as her opening for memory, and there is nothing insistent about it—very like her.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

On this day at least, when the summer robes have been cut and changed anew, will the old remembering not come forward of itself

On this day at least,
when the summer robes have been
cut and changed anew,
will the old remembering
not come forward of itself