有明のつれなく見えし月は出でぬ
山時鳥待つ夜ながらに
山時鳥待つ夜ながらに
- Roma-ji
-
Ariake no tsurenaku mieshi tsuki wa idenu yamahototogisu matsu yo nagara ni
- English Translation
-
Cold as the dawn moon
that once looked on me, it has
come out, and the bird
the mountain cuckoo, has not
and still the night is waiting
- Meaning
- The dawn moon that looked so unconcerned has gone from the sky, and the night is still a night of waiting for the mountain cuckoo.
- Commentary
-
Book Three Summer Poems 209
Headnote: for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
By allusion, the words of a love poem are turned to the cuckoo. The headnote assigns it to the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The poet, given as Regent and Chancellor, is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune, a son of the Regent Fujiwara no Kanezane and author of the Japanese preface to the Shin Kokin Wakashu. In Book One he is the poet of the first, twenty-third, sixty-first, sixty-second and sixty-sixth poems, and in Book Two of the hundred and thirty-sixth, hundred and forty-seventh, hundred and fifty-seventh and hundred and seventy-fourth.
The time is a summer daybreak; no place is given.
The occasion was submission to the contest.
The model is Mibu no Tadamine's poem in the Kokin Wakashu, in which nothing is more wretched than dawn, since the parting under a dawn moon that looked on unconcerned.
The first two lines take the model's words unchanged. The adjective means unconcerned, taking no notice, the word used in Kunizane's tenth poem and Ariie's ninety-eighth in Book One.
With the third line the turn from the model occurs. The older poem is a parting; this one is a sky after the moon has gone, and the language of love is moved into a daybreak.
The fourth line names what is being waited for.
The particle at the close means: still in that state. The moon has gone and the night of waiting has not ended, so that time hangs suspended. The model's complaint that nothing is worse than dawn becomes here the length of a night worn out with waiting, and the form of a love poem is borrowed to state the wait for a bird.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Yoshitsune
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Prev Poem
-
Hitokoe wa omoi zo aenu hototogisu tasogaredoki no kumo no mayoi ni
- Next Poem
-
Waga kokoro ika ni se yo tote hototogisu kumoma no tsuki no kage ni nakuramu