嵐吹く岸の柳のいなむしろ
織り敷く波に任せてぞ見る
織り敷く波に任せてぞ見る
- Roma-ji
-
Arashi fuku kishi no yanagi no inamushiro orishiku nami ni makasete zo miru
- English Translation
-
The storm wind is up
and the willows at the bank
lie like woven mats
and I watch them, left to be
spread out flat by the waves there
- Meaning
- The storm blows, and the willows at the bank lie on the water like straw matting; I watch them, left to the waves that weave and spread them.
- Commentary
-
Book One Spring Poems I 71
Headnote: from among a hundred poems.
The third poem in the run on willow. Branches beaten down by the wind and spread across the water are seen as matting woven from rice straw. The headnote assigns it to a hundred-poem sequence.
Retired Emperor Sutoku (1119-1164) was the eldest son of Emperor Toba. Defeated in the Hogen disturbance of 1156, he was exiled to Sanuki and died there. The Kyuan sequences named in the headnote to the thirteenth poem were commissioned by him.
The time is spring, on a windy day at a riverbank.
The occasion was the presentation of the hundred-poem sequence.
The first line gives a strong wind and the second fixes place and subject.
The third line names matting woven of rice straw, and the trailing branches spread on the water are seen as that. Matting is a thing spread out, so the word also leads into the verb below.
The verb in the fourth line, to weave, belongs to the vocabulary of matting. The waves are made to weave the branches and lay them down, working like craftsmen. It is the conceit of Ise's sixty-fifth poem, where the spring rain wove figured silk, and the two meet in the language of cloth.
An emphatic particle governs the attributive verb at the close. The attitude is one of leaving things to the waves and simply watching.
Comparison, associated words and an emphatic construction are all held in five lines, and the workmanship suggests how deeply Sutoku had given himself to poetry.
- Author
- Retired Emperor Sutoku
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- It trails on the wind and so the spring has come now for on the roadway where the willow's shadow falls the people are lingering
- By the great river of Yoshino, the old grove of willows: no shade can be seen there yet, and still it has begun to feel spring
- Poled by shallow boats the still reach of Mutsuda and the willow fields their green is deep, and deeply the spring lies hazed upon them
- The wind of the spring blows the haze apart, and through the gaps that open they trail out in disorder the green willow's hanging threads