あはと見る淡路の島のあはれさへ
残るくまなく澄める夜の月
残るくまなく澄める夜の月
- Roma-ji
-
Awa to miru Awaji no shima no aware sae
nokoru kuma naku sumeru yo no tsuki - English Translation
-
Even the feeling
of Awaji, that island
seen and named as "ah"—
it lights it with nothing left
in shadow, this clear night moon
- Meaning
- This clear night moon leaves no corner dark—even the old feeling of Awaji, the island once glimpsed and named with an "ah."
- Commentary
-
Part One: Akashi
The fourth month came, and while the novice saw to summer robes and bed curtains with real taste, a quiet moonlit night came round. The sea, visible without a cloud over it, could be mistaken for the pond water of the Nijo residence he knew so well, and a longing beyond words rose with nowhere to go. Looking up, he saw Awaji before him, murmured an old poem, and spoke this one. Soon after he took from its bag the koto he had not touched in a long while.
"Awa to miru" is to see a thing and say "ah," carrying the sound of the place-name Awaji. It draws on Mitsune's poem about seeing the moon far off at Awaji, so that the sound "awa" comes three times. "Nokoru kuma naku" is with no corner left over. "Sumeru" is held to play clarity against doing. The moon tonight lights up even the feeling inside an old poem, laying an earlier poet's view and his own under one light.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- Had I not leaned on the help of the god who dwells within the sea here, I would be drifting out where the eight hundred tides meet now
- How far off it is, the place my thoughts go out to— from a shore I had never known I have gone on further, following the shores
- Have you too come to know what sleeping alone is— how, with nothing to do, she passes night away in Akashi's lonely bay
- In the traveller's robe, for the sorrow of its hem, I cannot hold out till the dawn; on grass pillow no dream will form itself here