This spring, to whom now
am I to show them—these young
bracken of the peak,
picked as a keepsake left by
one who is no longer here

Meaning

This spring, to whom am I to show them—the young bracken of the peak, picked as a keepsake of one who is gone?

Commentary

Part Three: Sawarabi

　Naka no Kimi answered with this, the basket and the abbot's poem before her. In other years she and her sister had received the season's first greens together and set them before their father's memorial. Now that her sister too was gone there was no one to show them to, and the poem says exactly that. She did not write it in her own hand but had a gentlewoman take her words down. The chapter's name, Sawarabi, comes from this poem, and it is known as the one that fixes the loneliness of the sister left alone at Uji.

　"One who is no longer here" can be read of the father and of the sister together. Katami is both a keepsake and, by sound, katami, a basket woven of bamboo, so that the very basket sent to her is taken up into the words. "The young bracken of the peak" is bracken picked on the hill where the temple stands. She takes his hatsuwarabi and gives it back as sawarabi, and in a few words turns the season's first gift into a relic of the dead.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

This spring, to whom now am I to show them—these young bracken of the peak, picked as a keepsake left by one who is no longer here

This spring, to whom now
am I to show them—these young
bracken of the peak,
picked as a keepsake left by
one who is no longer here