大空をめぐる月日のいくかへり
今日行くすゑにあはむとすらむ
今日行くすゑにあはむとすらむ
- Roma-ji
-
Ōzora o meguru tsukihi no iku kaeri kyō yukusue ni awamu to suramu
- English Translation
-
How many times must
the sun and moon go round the
great sky before they
come again to the far end
of this day we keep today?
- Meaning
- How many times must sun and moon go round the great sky before they come again to the far end of the day we keep today?
- Commentary
-
39 Screen Poems for the Celebration of the Minister of the Left of Koichijō
The eighth month came. About that time the world was in an uproar over the celebration for the Minister of the Left of Koichijō. The Captain of the Left Gate Guards was to have the screens made, and by way of a connection that had no business asking for poems, the author was pressed to write. What one is given is a written list of the scenes painted on the screens. She sent it back again and again, saying the thing was hollow; but they insisted beyond all reason, and so in the evenings, in the intervals of moon-gazing, she thought out one or two at a time. What follows are the poems made for each of the painted scenes. Thus she was forced into a tiresome business, and into a great number of pieces besides; and of these, she hears, the one on the fishing fires and the one on the flock of plovers were the ones chosen.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Neither the Minister of the Left of Koichijō nor the Captain of the Left Gate Guards who arranged the celebration is named in the text, which gives only office and residence; marginal notes in the base text identify them as Fujiwara no Morotada and Fujiwara no Naritoki. A screen poem is written to accompany a scene painted on a screen, the poet being given a written description of the picture beforehand.
It is the eighth month of the second year of Anna, and the place is the author's dwelling.
It was written for a painting of a celebration being held at someone's house, and is the first of the nine.
Poems follow for the other paintings in turn: a traveler hearing plovers on the shore, the leading up of the colts, and the rest.
The opening means circling the heavens and leads into the sun and moon of the second line; their going round the sky is itself the passing of the years. The third line asks how many times they must come round, a question about number that suits a poem of felicitation. The fourth speaks of the far end of this present day, taking the day of the celebration as the point from which one looks forward. The close is conjectural: will they come to meet it? The wish that this day may return again and again is set within the great frame of the movement of the heavens, in strict conformity with the type of the celebratory screen poem. As the narrative says, she called the thing hollow and returned it several times; it is a commissioned piece, and the absence of any private feeling is exactly what marks its character.
- Author
- The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- Will you not seek out the smoke of the salt-fires that the seafolk — the nun — burns, brooding at every turn of the wind that blows past her?
- On that desolate bay the smoke of salt did rise; but there was no wind that turned and carried it back this way, to where I waited.
- Hearing in one cry a thousand birds at once, I cannot even guess the number of the ages those cries will run out to.
- Living so many years in the hills they cross, I have come to know by sight even the colts led past me at the end of a rope.