Cuckoo, carry word
to her for me: that here at
home the orange trees
are at the very height of
their flowering even now
- Meaning
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Cuckoo, carry word to her for me—that here at home the orange trees are at the very height of their flowering.
- Commentary
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Part Two: Maboroshi
Yugiri followed Genji's poem with this one. Asking the cuckoo to take a message, he says he would have Murasaki no Ue know that the orange in the garden is flowering as it always did. He had not been raised by her, but in the previous chapter, looking at her face in death, he had been deeply struck; she meant something particular to him too. After these poems Genji went back to being alone, and wept his way through the summer.
"Carry word" is a wish put to the bird. "Here at home" is one's native place, and here the house where she lived. "Orange trees" have been written of since the old poems as the scent that brings back the past. "At the very height even now" is exactly that. Entrusting a message to a bird that travels to the other world takes up his father's figure, and the poem keeps the etiquette of a paired set.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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