待つ人もあらじと思ふ山里の
梢を見つつなほぞ過ぎ憂き
梢を見つつなほぞ過ぎ憂き
- Roma-ji
-
Matsu hito mo araji to omou yamazato no
kozue o mitsutsu nao zo sugiuki - English Translation
-
Thinking there can be
no one waiting for me here,
I look at the tops
of the trees of this hill village,
and still find it hard to pass
- Meaning
- Thinking there can be no one here waiting for me, I look at the treetops of this hill village and still find it hard to pass by.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Tenarai
The Captain's reply. He knows no one is waiting, he says, and still cannot go past when he sees the treetops of the house. The road he first took in memory of his dead wife has become the road of his attachment to Ukifune, and he states plainly how hard it is to leave off. Afterward he sent one more poem in to Ukifune herself and went away.
Matsu hito mo araji is that no one is waiting, with some hearing matsu, pine, in matsu, to wait. "Looking at the treetops" carries on the shade and trees of her poem. Sugi uki is to find it hard to pass by. Admitting that he is refused and going all the same is where the whole of this man's persistence lies.
- 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
- At the foot of hills where the withering wind has blown, there is not so much as the shade of a single tree to stand hidden behind
- It is the world at large that you have turned from, and yet, taking the words of your renouncing to me, it is my own lot that hurts
- Though I look out at the snow that darkens the fields and hills, what has passed and fallen away from me is sorrowful again today