Seeing her only
as a keepsake of the dead,
I find these sleeves of
mine soaked with the morning dew
until there is no room left

Meaning

Seeing her only as a keepsake of the dead, I find my sleeves soaked with the morning dew until there is no room left in them.

Commentary

Part Three: Azumaya

　Before dawn on the thirteenth of the Ninth Month, Kaoru lifted Ukifune into a carriage from the little house at Sanjo and set out for Uji. Ben the nun, riding with them, wept at the thought that this should have been Oigimi's journey, and the young gentlewoman Jiju thought her tears an ill omen and resented them. Drawing in his sleeve, which had hung out long and grown wet with the river mist, Kaoru spoke this to himself without meaning to. Ukifune, told nothing of where she was going, lay face down in the carriage as it went.

　Katami is a keepsake by which the dead are remembered, here Ukifune as the stand-in for Oigimi. Asatsuyu is the dew on the road and at the same time sounds as tears. Tokoroseki made is until there is no room left, said of how thoroughly the sleeves are soaked. That a man should grieve for one woman while looking at another sitting beside him is the whole shape of the poem, and it presses the precariousness of Ukifune's position on the reader.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Seeing her only as a keepsake of the dead, I find these sleeves of mine soaked with the morning dew until there is no room left

Seeing her only
as a keepsake of the dead,
I find these sleeves of
mine soaked with the morning dew
until there is no room left