Niwa no omo wa mada kawakanu ni yūdachi no sora sarigenaku sumeru tsuki kana

English Translation

The garden's surface
has not yet dried, and even
so, as if nothing
had happened, in the squall's sky
the moon is shining, and clear

Meaning

The garden has not dried yet, and the sky that gave the squall is clear as though nothing had happened, with the moon in it.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 267

Headnote: composed on the summer moon.
The fifth poem on summer squalls, on the difference between the ground, still wet, and the sky, already clear with a moon in it. The headnote gives the summer moon as the topic.
The poet, given by his rank, is Minamoto no Yorimasa (1104-1180). He served as a warrior and was accomplished in poetry, rising to the junior third rank. Nijoin no Sanuki, poet of the hundred and thirtieth piece in Book Two, was his daughter.
The time is a night after a summer squall; the place is the poet's garden.
The occasion was the set topic.

The first line is the opening of Shirakawa's two hundred and forty-ninth poem; both look up at a garden from the ground.
The particle in the second line works almost concessively: the marks of the rain are still there.
The phrase in the third and fourth lines means as if nothing of the kind had occurred. The sky that sent the rain is now pretending otherwise, which is close to the adjective used of the moon in the two hundred and fifty-ninth poem.
The poem closes on a noun with an exclamatory particle. The verb means to be clear and unclouded, as in Masafusa's two hundred and twenty-ninth poem. The mismatch between wet ground and clear sky is the poem's point, and the speed with which a squall passes is measured by that gap.

Author

Minamoto no Yorimasa

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other