Kumoi yori uchikochi no koe o kiku nabe ni sashikumu bakari miyuru tsukikage

English Translation

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.

Meaning

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 in my hands.

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 women watch the moon of the fifteenth night of the eighth month reflected in a spring near the front of a house, while someone passes along the road beyond the fence playing a flute.
Poems follow for further paintings: cranes at play in a pine grove, a river weir, and the rest.

The opening means from far off in the sky, describing flute music heard at a distance. The second names voices from this side and that, the flutes of people passing along the road. The third means as one listens, and joins the act of hearing to the act of seeing in the line that follows. The verb in the fourth means to dip the hand and draw water up: since the moon lies on the surface of the spring, it looks as though it might be scooped. The spring and the moon of the painting are the poem's material exactly. The close ends on the moonlight itself, a noun left standing. Flutes for the ear and a moon on the water for the eye are set side by side, and joined by the proposition that the more one listens the nearer the moon appears — so that every element of the picture is gathered up and resolved into a single movement of the senses.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other