How did we contrive
to fledge and to grow like this—
thinking even so,
I come to know the bitter
bond that is the waterbird's

Meaning

Wondering how we ever came to grow up at all, I recognize the bitter bond that is the waterbird's.

Commentary

Part Three: Hashihime

　Oigimi answered her father's poem on the waterfowl with this one. She had lost her mother early and had grown up unseen in the mountain village, and she turns his grief toward her own upbringing. Naka no Kimi followed with a poem of her own, so that the three make a single exchange and the life of the family at Uji is set before the reader.

　To fledge belongs to the world of birds and takes up the waterbird her father had used. Uki, bitter, also sounds as uki, floating, so that the bird riding on the water and the hardness of her life lie over each other. Chigiri is the bond fixed in a former life. Where the father laments the wife he lost, the daughter answers with the precariousness of the life she and her sister have led, and the situation of the Uji sisters is stated here for the first time.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

How did we contrive to fledge and to grow like this— thinking even so, I come to know the bitter bond that is the waterbird's

How did we contrive
to fledge and to grow like this—
thinking even so,
I come to know the bitter
bond that is the waterbird's