Since it is a moon
that came leaking down to me
from the palace sky,
I do not intend to speak
lightly of where it has been
- Meaning
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Since it is a moon that came leaking down from the clouded palace sky, I do not mean to say lightly where it came from.
- Commentary
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Volume One: The Night Attack in the Palace
Two anecdotes of Tadamori's refinement stand together. After the poem on the Akashi shore comes this one.
Tadamori kept a favorite lady among the women serving at the retired emperor's palace, and used to visit her. On one occasion he left behind in her chamber a fan with a moon painted at its edge. The other women found it and laughed among themselves: whose moonlight is this, they said, its origin is doubtful. The name of the man visiting her in secret was on the point of being exposed as a joke.
The lady answered them on the spot with this poem. The tale reports that Tadamori's feeling for her grew deeper still, and reveals that she was the mother of Taira no Tadanori, Governor of Satsuma. As like draws to like, it concludes: because Tadamori was a man of taste, the lady too was accomplished.
The pun is on tadamori, which means both "merely leaking down" and the name Tadamori. The lover's name is set directly into the image of a moon leaking through the clouds.
Kumoi means both the sky and the palace, and oborage works both as the haziness of the moon and as the sense of "carelessly." The question was about the fan's origin; the answer is given as the moon's origin. She refuses to name him and yet, in the pun, names him outright—that doubleness is the pleasure of the poem.
The wit of turning a joke back as a verse pairs this poem with Tadamori's own just before it. And by noting that the poet was Tadanori's mother, the tale plants here the lineage of the man who, in Volume Seven's "Tadanori Leaves the Capital," will stake his life on a poem.
kumoi……the sky; also the imperial palace.
tadamori……puns on "merely leaking down" and the name Tadamori.
oborage……hazy, as the moon is; also carelessly, lightly.
iwaji to zo omou……I mean not to say it.
tsubone……a room assigned to a lady-in-waiting at court.
sentō……the residence of a retired or cloistered emperor.
tsuma ni tsuki idashitaru ōgi……a fan with a moon painted out at its edge.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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