A Hundred Verses from Old Japan/Poem 57
57
MURASAKI SHIKIBU
Meguri-aite
Mishi ya sore tomo
Wakanu ma ni
Kumo gakure nishi
Yowa no tsuki kana.
MURASAKI SHIKIBU
I wandered forth this moonlight night,
And some one hurried by;
But who it was I could not see,—
Clouds driving o’er the sky
Obscured the moon on high.
This lady lost her mother when very young, and her father, the minister Toyonari Fujiwara, married again. Her skill at composing verses caused her stepmother to become jealous, and the latter treated her with great cruelty. She married Nobutaka, a nobleman, and the following verse was written by her daughter. She is famous in Japanese literature as the authoress of Genji Monogatari, a historical work in fifty-four sections, which she wrote in the monastery of Ishiyama, near Kyōto. She was one night taking a moonlight stroll on her verandah and caught sight of her lover; but, though she barely recognized him, the Kokinshiu, from which the verse is taken, adds that you are to understand that her reputation was overshadowed from that moment, like the moon behind the clouds. She died in the year 992.
Sore tomo can mean either ‘though I glanced at him’, or else (wakanu, I did not recognize) ‘that friend’.