Poling back and forth,
the ferryman of Uji
must have let the drops
of morning and of evening
rot his sleeves quite through at last
- Meaning
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The ferryman who poles back and forth across the Uji river must by now have let the drops of morning and evening rot his sleeves quite through.
- Commentary
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Part Three: Hashihime
Oigimi's answer to Kaoru's poem of the lady of the bridge. He had spoken of drops falling from the pole, and she takes up the pole and gives it to the ferryman who crosses the river every day of his life. Making herself and her sister into that ferryman, she shows without saying it plainly how constantly they are in tears.
Kawaosa is the man who works the ferry. Sashikaeru is to pole back and forth, and carries on the pole from his poem. Kutasu is to soak a thing until it rots, the standard way of speaking of sleeves that are never dry. Against his passing sympathy she sets a grief that comes morning and evening without a break, and the weight of the sisters' daily life comes through.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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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
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More than you, who turn
your back on the world before
my very eyes, it
is my soul, parting from you
at a distance, that grieves me
-
Had I life enough,
I might have looked and known him—
the pine I have left
among the rocks, unremarked,
and how it grows on from here