You who pass across
the great sky, conjurer—go
and seek out for me
the whereabouts of a soul
that will not come even in dreams

Meaning

You who cross the great sky, conjurer—go and seek out for me the whereabouts of a soul that will not come to me even in dreams.

Commentary

Part Two: Maboroshi

　As autumn deepened and the sky turned to showers, Genji went on thinking of her. He asked only that she come to him once in a dream, and even that was refused. He spoke this poem to himself, and the chapter takes its name from it. The same word appears in the first chapter, where the Kiritsubo Emperor wished for such a conjurer to look for his own dead lady, so that the tale's opening and its close are tied by a single word.

　"Conjurer who passes across the great sky" comes from the Chinese poem in which an emperor sends an adept to look for the soul of his lost consort. "Even in dreams" is not even there. "A soul that will not come" is one that shows itself nowhere. "Go and seek out" is a command. Borrowing a foreign story, the poem states the grief of being unable to reach the dead, and it is among the finest of his last years.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

You who pass across the great sky, conjurer—go and seek out for me the whereabouts of a soul that will not come even in dreams

You who pass across
the great sky, conjurer—go
and seek out for me
the whereabouts of a soul
that will not come even in dreams