Murasaki

Murasaki

I was tired but couldn't go to sleep. No matter which way I turned I cold hear the other ladies talking in the next room. - what a difference from home, where everybody would be asleep by now!.
- Yes, there are footsteps all night long at the palace. Its's hard to settle down.
They too, had just come back from home leave. The first night was the hardest. I missed the quiet warmth of Katako's sleeping body and steady breathing. No lover, man or woman, can ever give the same comforting calm as sleeping with a child. I was morbidly aware of the approach of my thirty-seventh year. As I lay awake, fretting and tossing, a poem arose in my mind, so I reached over for my journal and scribbled it down in the wan glow of the light of a coal:

Toshi kurete
waga yo fukete yuku
kaze oto ni
kokoro no naka no
susamajiki kana



The year draws to a close, and my life as well; the fierce sound of the wind chills my heart



The tsuina ceremony to cast out evil spirits was over early. I didn't think much of the young man in charge that year. He was much too thin to make a convincing demon-chaser. I came back to my room to relax, and had just finished blackening my teeth and was putting on light makeup when Ben no Naishi came in. Her lips were like plump flower buds, and her eyes drooped charmingly at the corners. She was as good natured as her features were soft. We talked for a while, and she got so comfortable she fell asleep. I took out my journal and began to write.

the Tale of Murasaki Liza Dalby 2000

LD manages to eerily inhabit the Heian, almost as Pierre Menard rewrote the Quixote.
There was a Japanese woman author about 300 years (Kamakura?) post Shikibu, who made glowing reference to Genji,
I had the book, but now lost, I cant find any reference to her.

Murasaki Dalby