It is for the sake
of the cherry that my heart
stirs when the wind blows
and this though I see it is
a flower with no thought for me
- Meaning
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It is for the cherry's sake that my heart stirs whenever the wind blows, and this though I see it is a flower that takes no thought for me.
- Commentary
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Part Three: Takekawa
It is the Third Month and the cherries are at their height. Tamakazura's daughters are about eighteen or nineteen, the elder bright and lofty in manner, the younger slender and graceful. They played go with the garden cherry as the stake, the tree each had claimed as her own since childhood: three games, and the flower would go to whoever won by one. They finished near the veranda as it grew dark, the women praying each for her own mistress. The Chamberlain Lieutenant had come to the Fujiwara Chamberlain's room just then, but the brothers had taken him out and there were few people about, and finding the gallery door open he stole up and looked in, made out the elder by the cherry of her robes, and longed for her the more. The right, the younger sister, won. The sisters went on disputing over the flower day after day, until on an evening when the wind blew hard the scattering of the cherry was more than they could bear, and the elder sister, who had lost, spoke this poem first. From here the women and even the girls join in, and the exchange over the flower goes on.
"Omoiguma naki" is to take no thought for another's feelings. She knows the flower will scatter without a care for the grief of those who would keep it, and says that even so her heart stirs at every wind. The chagrin of having lost the stake is turned into a reproach against the flower itself, and the loss is never named. The same phrasing appears in a poem in Murasaki Shikibu's own collection. It is the first of the six cherry poems of this chapter.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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