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
- Meaning
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Though I look out at the snow that darkens the fields and hills, what has fallen away into the past is sorrowful again today.
- Commentary
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Part Three: Tenarai
With the new year, in Kaoru's twenty-eighth, the house at Ono lay buried in snow and no one came. Ukifune, now a nun, passed quiet days with Shosho and the others. This is the first of four poems exchanged with the elder nun on a day of snowfall. The days at Uji, and the night she threw herself into the river, have all gone far off under the snow.
Kakikurasu is to darken the sky, a word used in the Ukifune chapter as well. Furinishi carries both furu, to fall as snow, and furu, to grow old and pass by, so that fallen snow and a vanished past lie together. Looking at snow is itself an act of remembering, and season and mind are joined in the one word. The poem says quietly that taking vows has not made the past go away.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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