清見潟月はつれなき天の戸を
待たでも白む波の上かな
待たでも白む波の上かな
- Roma-ji
-
Kiyomigata tsuki wa tsurenaki ama no to o matade mo shiramu nami no ue kana
- English Translation
-
At Kiyomi Bay
the moon is unconcerned, and
the gate of heaven
is not open yet, and still
the waves are whitening there
- Meaning
- At Kiyomi Bay the moon will not set, and before the gate of heaven has opened the waves are already going white.
- Commentary
-
Book Three Summer Poems 259
Headnote: for the place where the barrier at Kiyomi was painted on the sliding screens of the Saisho Shitenno-in.
The second poem on clear water and coolness, on daybreak at the shore. The Saisho Shitenno-in was a chapel built by Retired Emperor Go-Toba, and poems were written for the paintings of famous places on its screens; this one belongs to the panel showing the barrier at Kiyomi. The hundred and eighty-fourth poem and the hundred and thirty-third of Book Two come from the same undertaking.
The poet, given by his court title, is Minamoto no Michiteru, a son of the Inner Minister Minamoto no Michichika, who later rose to Chancellor. In Book One he is the poet of the twenty-fifth poem. Minamoto no Michitomo, poet of the two hundred and thirty-ninth, was his elder brother.
The time is a summer daybreak; the place is Kiyomi Bay in Suruga Province, in what is now Shimizu in Shizuoka, a barrier on the Tokaido road.
The occasion was the writing of poems for the screens.
The first line raises the place.
The adjective in the second line means unconcerned, taking no notice, used of the moon in the two hundred and ninth and thirty-fifth poems. A moon that will not set although the night is ending is treated as heartless.
The third line names the gate of heaven, the rock door of the myth, used by extension for the opening of the day.
A negative connective in the fourth line gives the sense of without waiting for daybreak.
The poem closes on a noun. The sky has not lightened and the waves already have. The whiteness of the water anticipates the dawn, and the moon's indifference stands against it. The shortness of a summer night is written here as a scene at the shore.
- Author
- Minamoto no Michiteru
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Close by my window the little clump of bamboo and when the wind blows I wake and think it autumn out of a summer night's dream
- In my cupped hands' hold the reflected light breaks up in the mountain well and before I had my fill the moon had gone down and set
- Even folded twice how cool it is, this summer robe, for the moonlight has come to lodge in the thin cloth of the sleeve, and shines there
- Has the autumn come back again, for the coolness by the Hatsuse in the shade of the cedars along the old river bank