It is the same sky
that the two of us look on,
and yet, why is it,
this winter rain that adds to
not knowing how you may be

Meaning

We look on the same sky, and yet why does this winter rain keep adding to my not knowing how you are?

Commentary

Part Three: Agemaki

　Winter came with Niou still unable to go to Uji, and he sent this to Naka no Kimi. He puts into the winter rain his impatience at being under one sky with her and unable to meet. She answered; and at Uji, where no one came, Oigimi went on grieving over her sister's prospects.

　Kumoi is the sky where the clouds are. Obotsukanasa is the anxiety of not knowing how another fares. Shigure, the intermittent rain of early winter, is a common figure for an unsettled mind. The bond of looking at one sky and the severance made by the rain are held against each other within the poem.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Now that autumn ends and the loneliness increases at the foot of the tree, do not blow past and be gone, wind in the pines on the peak
It is not that I think to lie down with you as with the young grasses, and yet I have the feeling of something knotted within
Here in the deep hills, where the hail comes down, morning and evening alike, the sky that I look upon goes on darkening over
The plovers at the water's edge, where the frost bites cold, cannot bear it, and the sound of their crying is sad in the growing light

It is the same sky that the two of us look on, and yet, why is it, this winter rain that adds to not knowing how you may be

It is the same sky
that the two of us look on,
and yet, why is it,
this winter rain that adds to
not knowing how you may be