Ōzora mo tada naranu kana kannazuki ware nomi shita ni shigure to omoeba

English Translation

The wide sky itself
is not as it usually is
in the godless month —
and I, only I, beneath
it, raining my own cold rain

Meaning

The wide sky itself is not as it usually is, in the godless month — and I, only I, beneath it, raining my own cold rain.

Commentary

113 The Village of Ide

After Morotada of the Palace Guards had drifted apart from the third daughter of Tachibana no Kinhira, he was chosen as a dancer for the festival and went out to it, and she and her sisters were there watching. When he had come home she sent him "Mukashi kite nareshi o sureru koromode o ana mezurashi to yoso ni mishi kana", and he sent back "Morotomo ni Ide no sato koso koishikere hitori ori uki yamabuki no hana", tied to a spray of yellow roses. Her answer to it is not known; but from the days when he was still visiting there is "Ōzora mo tada naranu kana kannazuki ware nomi shita ni shigure to omoeba", and another of hers, "Au koto no nami no shitagusa mikakurete shizugokoro naku ne koso nakarure". That is the whole of the section.
Tachibana no Kinhira headed the Palace Table Office, and his daughters lived at the place called Agata no Ido. The eldest served the empress under the name of the Lady Shōshō. The third was the first love of Minamoto no Saneakira in his youth, and her poems appear in the hundred and eleventh through hundred and thirteenth sections and in the hundred and sixteenth. Morotada held a third-rank post in the Palace Guards and appears in the hundred and twelfth section.
The setting is the days when he was still visiting. The godless month tells us it is the tenth month of the old calendar.
The prose records nothing further of what prompted it, saying only that it belongs to those days.
One more poem of hers follows, and the section closes.

The opening exclaims that the sky is not as it usually is; the phrase means out of the ordinary, not a common thing.
The tenth month of the old calendar is the season of the cold intermittent rains, and that is why the sky is unusual.
The particle in the fourth line means only, and the word for beneath covers both under the sky and inside one's heart, out of sight.
The verb that closes the poem is the one used of those rains falling, and it carries weeping with it: the sky rains, and so, unseen, does she. Where the poem of the hundred and tenth section had a clear sky and wet sleeves, this one has sky and speaker doing the same thing, and the two make a pair.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other