松のかげ眞砂のなかと尋ぬるは
なにのあかぬぞたづのむらとり
なにのあかぬぞたづのむらとり
- Roma-ji
-
Matsu no kage masago no naka to tazunuru wa nani no akanu zo tazu no muratori
- English Translation
-
Searching the shade of
the pines, and then the fine sand —
what is it you find
not enough, you flock of cranes,
you birds that gather here?
- Meaning
- Searching the shade of the pines, and then the fine sand — what is it you find not enough, you flock of cranes?
- 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 pine grove on the shore before a countryman's house, with cranes at play; two poems were required for this scene, and this is the second.
The narrative says that of these poems the one on the fishing fires and the one on the flock of plovers were the ones chosen.
Where the first poem kept to the pines, this one takes the cranes for its subject, so that the pair divide the scene between them. The opening names the shade of the pines and the second the fine sand, the two places over which the cranes walk. Sand is the standard figure for what cannot be counted, and with the pine it belongs to the language of felicitation. The third line means searching about, describing the birds' movement in the painting. The fourth asks what they find insufficient — ostensibly a question about foraging, but carrying the suggestion that, surrounded by the pine's thousand years and the sand's numberlessness, they should want more still. The close ends on the flock itself, addressed and left there. Crane, pine and sand all signify long life and great number, and to say that even these are not enough pushes the language of blessing to excess. As a division of labor between two poems required for one picture, the allotment of material is perfectly clear.
- Author
- The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- 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.
- Giving my heart to the stakes of the fishing weir, I let the days go — and so I have spent night after night, sleeping away from home.
- The fishing fires and the seafolk's little boats alike lie quiet. I have come to a bay where living is worth the living — where shells are.