U no hana no muramura sakeru kakine o ba kumoma no tsuki no kage ka to zo miru

English Translation

The deutzia blooms
here and there along the hedge
in scattered clusters
and I take the hedge itself
for moonlight between the clouds

Meaning

The deutzia is out in clumps along the hedge, and I take it for moonlight coming through breaks in the cloud.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 180

Headnote: he had poems written on the theme of deutzia being like the moon.
A run on deutzia begins here. The topic is the likeness of the flower to moonlight. The phrasing recalls a line of Chinese verse, and the poem belongs with the fifty-fifth poem of Book One and the hundred and fifty-second of Book Two, written to such lines.
Retired Emperor Shirakawa (1053-1129) was the eldest son of Emperor Go-Sanjo. After his abdication he began the rule of the cloistered sovereigns and held power for many years. He appears in the headnote to the eightieth poem of Book One.
The time is early summer; the place is a hedge where deutzia is in flower. The plant bears small white flowers in clusters.
The occasion was the set topic.

The first line names the object.
The second line means growing in scattered clumps: not evenly, but in patches.
The object particle in the third line is voiced, which adds emphasis.
The fourth line names moonlight coming through gaps in cloud. The white flowers, scattered in patches, are seen as light broken by cloud. The likeness named in the topic is made concrete not as the moon itself but as a moon behind cloud.
The word in the closing line means light, and an emphatic particle governs the attributive verb. Since Book One, snow and blossom, cloud and blossom have been taken for one another; here moonlight and flowers are confused, and the device of mistaking one white thing for another is carried into the summer poems.

Author

Retired Emperor Shirakawa

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other