人はみないそぎたつめる袖の浦に
一人藻塩を垂るる海人かな
一人藻塩を垂るる海人かな
- Roma-ji
-
Hito wa mina isogitatsumeru Sode no ura ni
hitori moshio o taruru ama kana - English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- Everyone is bent on setting out, on cutting the cloth of their sleeves, and here alone is a nun letting the salt drops fall.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Sawarabi
On the day of the removal the gentlewomen at the villa were busy with preparations for the journey to the capital, cutting and sewing their robes. Ben the nun alone had been settled to stay at Uji. This is the poem she offered to Naka no Kimi. Naka no Kimi answered and comforted her, and then set out for the capital, leaving the old woman behind. From then on Ben, remaining at Uji, takes on the important office of go-between who will bring Kaoru and Ukifune together.
The poem is built on a run of double meanings. Tatsu is both tatsu, to set out, and tatsu, to cut cloth; ura is both a bay and ura, the lining; and ama is both a fisher and ama, a nun. Ura and tatsu belong with sode, sleeve, and moshio and ama belong with ura, so that the busy indoor scene and the figure of a salt-burner on the shore rise up together. It looks like word-play, and yet the loneliness of one being left behind is set solidly at its centre.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Having lived so long, I have come upon a shoal of gladness at last— whereas, had I thrown myself into the Uji river