遠方こちの汀に波は隔つとも
なほ吹きかよへ宇治の川風
なほ吹きかよへ宇治の川風
- Roma-ji
-
Ochikata kochi no migiwa ni nami wa hedatsu tomo
nao fukikayoe Uji no kawakaze - English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- Though waves lie between the near shore and the far, blow across and back again, O river wind of Uji.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Shiigamoto
Niou answered on Kaoru's behalf. Taking up the ochi, the far shore, of the prince's poem, he widens it to near shore and far, and asks that the coming and going not be broken off though the river divides them. For Niou, who had already been curious about the daughters at Uji, this reply is the first step toward them.
Migiwa is the water's edge. "Though the waves divide" answers the white waves of the other poem. "Blow across" is an imperative, the common form of entrusting one's letters to the wind. Where the prince laments the distance, Niou grants it and asks for the exchange anyway, so that the two poems fit closely together. After this he sends word to Uji again and again.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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
- 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
- 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
- One who breaks a spray to wear it, and in passing goes by the rough hedge of a mountain rustic's house— just a traveller of spring