Iwama tojishi kōri mo kesa wa tokesomete koke no shitamizu michi motomuramu

English Translation

The ice that had closed
the clefts of rock this morning
begins to melt now
and the water beneath moss
must be seeking out its road

Meaning

The ice that sealed the gaps between the rocks has begun to melt this morning, and the water under the moss must be feeling for a way through.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 7

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
This poem turns on the idea that ice begins to melt on the first day of spring. Where Shune's poem looked out over haze on the sea, this one narrows to a single point among mountain rocks and imagines the movement of water that has started to run underground. The headnote is carried over from the poem before and is given only as topic unknown.
The Monk Saigyo (1118-1190), whose lay name was Sato no Norikiyo, served as a guard of the northern quarters under Retired Emperor Toba and took orders at twenty-three. He travelled through the provinces and left a great body of poems, gathered in his Sankashu. Ninety-four of his poems entered the Shin Kokin Wakashu, more than by any other poet.
The time is the morning of the first day of spring; the place is a mountain waterside among rocks and moss.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The first two lines set the ice that had stopped the gaps between rocks against this particular morning, the morning spring begins. The idea that the wind of that day melts the ice descends from Ki no Tsurayuki's poem in the Kokin Wakashu, about water once cupped in wet sleeves, now frozen, that the wind of the first spring day may be thawing; Saigyo writes in that line.
The verb in the third line adds the sense of beginning to. Nothing has melted through yet, and the poem holds to that first instant.
The fourth line names water running under moss, a flow beneath the surface that cannot be seen. Here the poem turns from sight to conjecture.
The closing auxiliary expresses present supposition: by now it must be doing so. To say that water seeks a road is to give it a will of its own. The whole point of the poem lies in reasoning toward an unseen movement in an unseen place.

Author

The Monk Saigyo

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other