I did not vanish
with the dew on the wild grass
I came parting through,
and here I am, watching the
moon over a village unlooked-for

Meaning

I did not vanish with the dew of the wild grass I came parting through, and here I stand, watching the moon over a village I never looked to see.

Commentary

Volume Eight: The Skein of Thread

　This is the last of the three poems on the moon of the thirteenth night, composed by Tsunemasa after Tadanori and Tsunemori.
　Tsunemasa is the son of Tsunemori, and the man who in Volume Seven returned the lute Seizan to the Ninna-ji abbot, exchanged four poems, and went west. Leaving the capital he had written that night after night he would lie on the single sleeve of a traveling robe, and that thinking of it he saw how far he was going. That distance has now become this moon over Kyushu.

　The dew of the fields is the dew of the grass he pushed through on the road, and also the standard figure for what vanishes. "Did not vanish" carries the suggestion that he might have—that perhaps he should have. There is a faint regret at having survived.
　"A village unlooked-for" is a place he never imagined. When he left the capital he had not thought about where he was going. And now he is watching the moon in a Kyushu village whose name he does not know.
　Read as a set, Tadanori thinks of a friend in the capital, Tsunemori of a night a year ago, and Tsunemasa of the fact of his being here. After two poems that go back into the past comes one that locates the present—and what it finds is a place no one expected.
　Paired with the traveling-robe poem of Volume Seven, these two complete his departure: on the night he left he said he was going far, and having gone far he says he is watching the moon over a village he never looked to see. Prediction and confirmation. He was killed at Ichi-no-tani the following spring.

wakete koshi……came parting the grasses.
nobe no tsuyu……dew on the grass of the fields; a figure for what vanishes.
kiezu shite……without vanishing.
omowanu sato……a village one never expected.
tsuki wo miru kana……here I am, looking at the moon.
Tsunemasa……Taira no Tsunemasa, son of Tsunemori and elder brother of Atsumori.
Seizan……the Chinese lute he returned to Ninna-ji in Volume Seven.
Ichi-no-tani……the place in Settsu where he was killed.

Source

Heike Monogatari

Other

I did not vanish with the dew on the wild grass I came parting through, and here I am, watching the moon over a village unlooked-for

I did not vanish
with the dew on the wild grass
I came parting through,
and here I am, watching the
moon over a village unlooked-for