かき暮らし晴れせぬ峰の雨雲に
浮きて世をふる身をもなさばや
浮きて世をふる身をもなさばや
- Roma-ji
-
Kakikurashi haresenu mine no amagumo ni
ukite yo o furu mi o mo nasabaya - English Translation
-
I would make myself
over into those rain clouds
on the peak, that dark
the sky and never clear, and
float there, and so pass my life
- Meaning
- I would make myself over into those rain clouds on the peak that darken the sky and never clear, and float there, and so pass my life.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Ukifune
Ukifune's reply to Niou. Taking over the clouds and the darkening sky of his poem, she says she would turn herself into those rain clouds. The sense that there is no place for her on the ground is stated plainly here for the first time, and it leads in time to the thought of the Uji river. Niou, receiving the poem, pressed all the harder to take her to himself.
Kakikurashi is to darken the sky, and answers his "even the sky is darkening." Uki carries both floating and uki, wretched. Yo o furu is to pass one's life, with heru sounding furu, to fall as rain, so that it belongs with the clouds. For all the double meanings, the poem says one thing only—that she would be gone from this world—and it announces plainly what is to come.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- How must it fare with the one who lives in that far village where the stream is rising, in a season of unclearing endless rain
- When I take the name of this place to be my own, then the neighbourhood of Uji in Yamashiro grows harder still to live in
- Idly, without cease, the rain that tells me my worth keeps falling, so that even in my sleeves the flood rises higher than before
- Not knowing that this was the season when the waves go over, I thought only that the pine of Sue was waiting there for me still