あまた年越ゆる山べに家居して
つなひくこまもおもなれにけり
つなひくこまもおもなれにけり
- Roma-ji
-
Amata toshi koyuru yamabe ni ieite tsuna hiku koma mo omonarenikeri
- English Translation
-
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.
- Meaning
- Living so many years in the hills they cross, I have come to know by sight even the colts led past at the end of a rope.
- 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 in which the colts are led down from the hills and taken into a nearby house to be viewed.
Poems follow for further paintings: women watching the moon on a spring, cranes at play in a pine grove, and the rest.
The opening means over many years and leads into the hills of the second line; the crossing is done by the colts, brought up each eighth month from the provincial pastures to the capital. The third line means keeping a house there, so that the poem speaks from the position of the householder in the picture. The fourth names the colts led on a rope, the very form of the ceremony. The verb at the close means to grow familiar by sight, so that even the colts that pass the same road year after year have become acquaintances. Long residence is stated from the unexpected side — that a horse should know one's face — and the length of the years so measured passes straight into the language of felicitation. Out of nothing but the name of a ceremony and a place, the poem finds its way to the householder's long standing, and there lies its ingenuity.
- Author
- The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- 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?
- Hearing in one cry a thousand birds at once, I cannot even guess the number of the ages those cries will run out to.
- From beyond the clouds I hear the flutes, here and there, and as I listen the moonlight on the water looks near enough to scoop up.
- The little pine grove standing where the waves can be seen from a distance — surely there is something there that leans, that gives its heart.