難波潟霞まぬ波も霞みけり
映るも曇る朧月夜に
映るも曇る朧月夜に
- Roma-ji
-
Naniwagata kasumanu nami mo kasumikeri utsuru mo kumoru oborozukiyo ni
- English Translation
-
At Naniwa bay
even waves that do not haze
have hazed over now
reflecting and clouding both
under a misted spring moon
- Meaning
- At Naniwa bay even the waves, which ought not to haze, have hazed: on a night when the moon is veiled, the water that reflects it clouds as well.
- Commentary
-
Book One Spring Poems I 57
Headnote: from the time when he presented a hundred-poem sequence.
The third poem in the run on the misted moon takes that moon over the sea, and holds that not only the sky but the water's surface clouds with it. The headnote refers to the Shoji sequences of 1200.
Minamoto no Tomochika was a son of Minamoto no Moromitsu. Kunaikyo of the fourth poem was his sister.
The time is a spring night; the place is Naniwa bay in Settsu Province, the tidal flats around what is now the city of Osaka, the same ground as the twenty-sixth poem.
The occasion was the presentation of the hundred-poem sequence.
The first line raises the place. The twenty-sixth poem took the same ground at dusk; this one takes it by night.
The second line means even the waves, which should not haze. A negative carries the assumption that haze belongs to the sky and not to water.
An exclamatory auxiliary in the third line marks the recognition of something unlooked for.
The fourth line has the reflecting surface clouding too. If the moon above is veiled, the moon in the water must be veiled as well. Stating the obvious as a discovery shows how far the veiling reaches.
The poem closes on a noun, putting the cause last in inversion. The fifty-fifth poem praised the misted moon itself; this one describes what the mist does to everything around it, and the run has moved a step on.
- Author
- Minamoto no Tomochika
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Neither shining out nor clouding wholly over on a night of spring nothing is a match for it the moon of a misted night
- A pale, shallow green the blossoms too hazing there into a single thing, and dimly to be seen the moon of a night of spring
- Now, they cry, it's time and the geese of the rice fields grieve as they set out under a misted spring moon in the sky at break of day
- Those who hear them weep and the tears come falling down the geese going home and crying out as they go in the sky at break of day