さもこそはよるべの水に水草ゐめ
今日のかざしよ名さへ忘るる
今日のかざしよ名さへ忘るる
- Roma-ji
-
Sa mo koso wa yorube no mizu ni mikusa ime
kyō no kazashi yo na sae wasururu - English Translation
-
It is only right
that water-weed should gather
in the god's still water—
but today's own ornament,
and you forget its very name
- Meaning
- It is only right that water-weed should gather in the god's still water; but today's ornament—and you have forgotten even its name.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Maboroshi
In the Fourth Month came the Kamo festival. The world was out with heartvine in its hair, and Genji stayed inside his curtains and went nowhere. The gentlewoman Chujo no Kimi picked up a sprig of the plant, and when Genji asked what it was called she sent him this poem. She had served Murasaki no Ue and now waited on Genji himself. He answered with a jest that lightened the room a little, and nothing in him lifted.
"It is only right" concedes the point. "The god's still water" is water set out for offerings, and the phrase says how long it has gone untouched. "Water-weed should gather" marks the passage of years. "Ornament" is what is worn in the hair or on a cap, here the festival's heartvine. "Forgotten even its name" is exactly that. Framed as a reproach for his not coming, the poem takes the day's actual conversation straight into verse, and it has wit.
- 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
- From this day, when I change into something thin as a feathered robe, this world of the cast-off cicada grows sadder to me by far
- For the most part this is a world I have thought my way out of, and still— should I go on plucking, and so sinning, at the heartvine
- Did you come to me through the sudden rain of this evening, when I sit remembering one who is gone— cuckoo down from the mountain