Hisakata no naka naru kawa no ukaibune ika ni chigirite yami o matsuramu

English Translation

On that river up
in the far heavens, the boats
of the cormorants
what have they promised, and why
do they wait for the darkness

Meaning

The cormorant boats on the river of heaven: what promise have they made, that they wait for a dark night?

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 254

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The fourth poem on cormorant fishing, and the close of the run. The fishing of earth is carried up to the River of Heaven, where boats are imagined too. The original gives no fresh headnote.
This is Teika's fourth appearance in this book, after the two hundred and thirty-second, thirty-fifth and forty-seventh poems.
The time is a summer night; the place is the River of Heaven.
The occasion was submission to the contest.
The Tanabata festival falls on the seventh day of the seventh month, in autumn, and there is a moon that night. To wait for darkness is to wait for a night without one.

The first line is a pillow word attaching to the word for heaven, and makes the river of the second line the River of Heaven.
The second line names a river running through the sky. That river had always been written of as one that boats cross; setting cormorant boats on it is this poem's device.
The third line uses the same words as the three poems before, so that four pieces are bound by one phrase.
The fourth line means: having made what promise? The verb belongs to the vows of the Tanabata meeting.
The auxiliary at the close expresses present conjecture. Since the fishing needs a dark night, the boats of heaven must wait for one too. The conditions of an earthly craft are carried into the sky and made to suggest the Tanabata vow, so that a run of poems on an actual scene ends in invention.

Author

Fujiwara no Teika

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other