Mado chikaki take no ha susabu kaze no oto ni itodo mijikaki utatane no yume

English Translation

Close by my window
the wind is playing over
the bamboo's leaves, and
at that sound it is shorter
still, this dream of a light sleep

Meaning

The wind runs over the bamboo leaves close by my window, and at that sound the dream of my light sleep is shorter still.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 256

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, from the time when she presented a hundred-poem sequence.
The poems turn here to bamboo and coolness. In this one the sound of wind in the bamboo breaks the sleeper's rest. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Princess Shokushi, a daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa, had served as High Priestess of the Kamo Shrine. This is her fourth appearance in this book, after the hundred and eighty-second, two hundred and fifteenth and two hundred and fortieth poems.
The time is a summer night; the place is beside a window.
The occasion was the presentation of the hundred-poem sequence.

The first line fixes the place. Ujiyoshi's two hundred and thirty-third poem also has a window; a word uncommon in this poetry appears twice in this book.
The verb in the second line means to move at will, to run wild, and gives the sound of wind through bamboo leaves.
The particle in the third line marks cause.
The adverb in the fourth line means all the more. A summer night is short already, and the sound cuts the sleep shorter still. It takes up Jien's two hundred and forty-second poem, on dozing through a short night.
The poem closes on a noun. The word for a light sleep is used in the hundred and ninety-seventh, two hundred and forty-second and two hundred and forty-fifth poems and recurs through this book, so that broken, shallow rest is written of again and again as a subject of the summer nights.

Author

Princess Shokushi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other