Where the fragrance of
the orange hangs in the air,
the cuckoo ought to
have taken more care of how
it lifted up its own voice
- Meaning
-
Where the fragrance of the orange hangs, the cuckoo ought to have taken more care how it lifted its voice.
- Commentary
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Part Three: Kagero
Niou's reply. He happened at that moment to be looking out at the garden with Naka no Kimi. Seeing that the letter had something behind it, he wrote this and added the words "awkward." It is an answer made in the knowledge that the other man has guessed, and after it Niou sent for Jiju, who knew how Ukifune had ended, and heard the whole story from her through a night.
In "where the orange is fragrant," kaoru, to be fragrant, carries Kaoru's name, and Niou lays himself over the cuckoo. That the bird should have sung with more care near the orange means that he should not have behaved lightly so near this man: it is an evasion, and at the same time an admission that he is in the wrong. Answering by working the other's name into the poem is a piece of wit very much in the manner of these two.
- Author
-
Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
-
Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
-
To the dying fall
of the temple bell, add the
sound of my own voice,
and carry word to her that
my life in the world is done
-
Do you too weep with
the muffled voice, if your heart
runs together with
that bird of the road of death,
whose cry is of no avail
-
If I too should go,
and this bitter old place fall
wholly into ruin,
who is there to remember
the shade of the lodging tree
-
My heart, which knows how
to feel, falls behind no one's,
and yet, being of
no account at all, I pass
my days as one going out