It may not look deep
where the surface can be seen,
and yet, in the bed
of the barrier river,
does the current ever fail

Meaning

It may not look deep where the surface shows, and yet in the bed of the barrier river does the current ever fail?

Commentary

Part Three: Yadorigi

　Kaoru's reply to Azechi no Kimi's reproach. He defends himself by saying that his feeling has not failed, only that he does not let it show. But his mind was not on this gentlewoman: it was on the dead elder sister, and on the younger in whom her likeness lived. Naka no Kimi was with child at the time, and the sight of her was to hold him back. The words of a man defending himself by distinguishing surface from depth answer to the later scene.

　"It may not look deep where the surface shows" is that the top of the water seems shallow. "The bed of the barrier river" is the channel under the surface, a figure for a heart still connected where it cannot be seen. Yuru mono ka wa is a rhetorical question: it never fails. He takes her sekikawa exactly as she used it and turns it into a contrast of surface and bed, so that the poem answers her in good form.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

It may not look deep where the surface can be seen, and yet, in the bed of the barrier river, does the current ever fail

It may not look deep
where the surface can be seen,
and yet, in the bed
of the barrier river,
does the current ever fail