身を投げむ涙の川に沈みても
恋しき瀬々に忘れしもせじ
恋しき瀬々に忘れしもせじ
- Roma-ji
-
Mi o nagemu namida no kawa ni shizumite mo
koishiki zeze ni wasure shi mo seji - English Translation
-
Though I were to sink
into that river of tears
you would throw yourself
in, I do not think that I
could forget those longed-for shoals
- Meaning
- Though I sank into that river of tears you would throw yourself into, I could not forget the shoals of the times I long for.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Sawarabi
Kaoru's reply to Ben's poem. He says that dying would not make him able to forget Oigimi, receiving the old woman's grief and setting his own beside it. That night, talking of the dead sister, he saw her likeness in Naka no Kimi as she sat downcast at the prospect of leaving Uji, and regretted that he had not kept her for himself as her sister's memorial instead of giving her to Niou. From that regret runs the attachment that will lead him, from the Yadorigi chapter on, to Ukifune.
It is a neat exchange, taking over her river of tears and throwing oneself in. Seze is the shallows of a river and also carries oriori, the times and occasions, so that it works as a word belonging with the river. To say that he will not forget even in death is strong for a poem of consolation, and shows that his feeling for Oigimi is still alive in him. Framed as an answer to an old servant's grief, it is in fact a statement of his own unfinished longing.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- The plum my sleeve brushed is unaltered in its scent, and yet is it the dwelling, moving root and all, that is to be otherwise
- Had I thrown myself into the river of tears that comes first of all, mine would have been a life not left behind by the one gone
- Everyone is bent on setting out, on cutting cloth for the sleeve's edge— and here, alone, is a nun who lets the salt drops fall down
- What is there to set it apart from the nun's robe where the salt drops fall— this sleeve of mine, wet through by waves that have nothing to hold