My heart, it is true,
has put off the shore of this
bitter world—and yet
I am the fisher's drifting
wood, that knows not where it goes

Meaning

My heart has indeed put off the shore of this bitter world; yet I am drifting wood upon the water, that does not know where it goes.

Commentary

Part Three: Tenarai

　Ukifune's reply to the Captain's poem of the fisher's boat. Her heart has left the world, she says, but her person is like a piece of driftwood with no course of its own, and so she lets his offer to follow her pass. Even as a nun she still holds herself to be a thing without anchorage, and that sense of herself runs back to the name Ukifune itself.

　"The shore of the bitter world" takes over the shore of his poem. Ama no ukigi is wood adrift on the sea, with ama, fisher, carrying ama, nun: one who drifts still, though she has taken vows. Since the drifting boat of the Ukifune chapter she has kept likening herself to what floats on water, and this poem belongs to that line. Setting heart against body states exactly where she now stands.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

My heart, it is true, has put off the shore of this bitter world—and yet I am the fisher's drifting wood, that knows not where it goes

My heart, it is true,
has put off the shore of this
bitter world—and yet
I am the fisher's drifting
wood, that knows not where it goes