いづことか尋ねて折らむ墨染に
霞みこめたる宿の桜を
霞みこめたる宿の桜を
- Roma-ji
-
Izuko to ka tazunete oramu sumizome ni
kasumikometaru yado no sakura o - English Translation
-
Where would you suppose
you were coming, that you might
break the cherry off
at this house of ours, closed in
with the haze of mourning dye
- Meaning
- Where would you suppose you were coming, to break off the cherry at this house of ours, closed in with the haze of mourning?
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Shiigamoto
Naka no Kimi's reply to Niou's poem on the cherry. The sisters were still in mourning for their father, and she says that they are in no state to enjoy the flowers, so declining his offer gently. With this exchange the chapter closes, and the tale passes on to Agemaki.
Sumizome is the black of mourning, and to say that the tree is hazed in that colour is to state that they are in mourning. Kasumikometaru is haze closed in on every side, and takes up his "with no haze between" to answer that what stands between is not haze but grief. She receives his "break it off" in the form of a rhetorical question, refusing him without giving offence, in her own manner.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- For whose sake now should I gather and make much of the little cress at the deep-snowed edge of the stream, having no parent living
- The cherry I saw at your house at second hand— this spring let me go with no haze set between us, break it off and wear the spray
- Into the knotted cords let a long bond be bound, and in the same place let the two strands twist and come, I would have it, together
- On the cord of tears so fragile that they will not stay strung upon it, how should I ever tie down a bond that is meant to last