There is a voice that
blows the spring haze open on
the wind off the hills—
yet what I see, set apart,
are white waves in the distance
- Meaning
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A voice comes on the mountain wind that blows the haze apart, yet what I see, held off from me, are white waves in the distance.
- Commentary
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Part Three: Shiigamoto
Late in the First Month, on his way back from a pilgrimage to Hatsuse, Niou no Miya stopped at Yugiri's villa at Uji, and there was music. The Eighth Prince, across the river, heard it and sent this poem over to the young men from the capital. Niou answered, and from here the dealings between the prince at Uji and the lords of the court begin.
To blow the haze open is said of a flute whose sound carries clear through the spring air. Ochi is a place name at Uji and also means far off. The white waves are the waves of the river, the width of water that lies between. Sound reaches him while the figures stay distant, and that shape gives the whole contrast of capital and mountain village, of splendour and decline, on which this chapter turns.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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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
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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
-
Though waves lie between
the near shore and the far shore,
still, I ask of you,
blow across and back again,
O river wind of Uji
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I have come to seek
where the mountain cherry glows,
and have broken off
a spray of the very same
blossom for us both to wear