あさぼらけ家路も見えず尋ね来し
槙の尾山は霧こめてけり
槙の尾山は霧こめてけり
- Roma-ji
-
Asaborake ieji mo miezu tazune koshi
Maki no Oyama wa kiri kometekeri - English Translation
-
In the growing light
I cannot see the road home—
Maki no O hill,
which I came so far to seek,
has filled itself up with mist
- Meaning
- At first light I cannot see the road home: Maki no O hill, which I came so far to seek, has filled with mist.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Hashihime
Kaoru had stayed at Uji until dawn, and sent this in to the sisters as he was leaving. He says nothing of having watched them, only that the mist has shut him in and he cannot go, and so conveys that he would rather stay. Oigimi answered, and from here the letters between Kaoru and the Uji sisters begin.
Asaborake is the hour when the night pales. Maki no O is a real hill by the Uji river, and naming it gives the morning its particular place. Kirikometekeri is mist closed in on every side. To plead that one cannot leave is a common form for a poem of greeting, but coming just after he has seen the sisters, the reluctance in it is heard beneath the words.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- No visitors come, though it is not that my heart has grown clear at all— I have found this Uji hill bitter, and borrowed a room
- More easily than the dew on leaves that give way to the mountain wind, and for no cause I can name, these tears of mine break and fall
- Over the steep path by the peak where clouds have come to rest, the autumn mist sets itself all the more— such is the season we keep
- Having fathomed how the lady of the bridge feels, I pole the shallows, and with the drops from the pole my own sleeves have been soaked through