Kumoma yori hoshiai no sora o miwataseba shizugokoro naki ama no kawanami

English Translation

Through a break in cloud
I look out at the wide sky
where the two stars meet
and the waves of the river
of heaven will not lie still

Meaning

Looking through a break in the cloud at the sky where the stars meet, I find the waves of the River of Heaven restless.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 317

Headnote: composed at the place where the Tanabata rites were held, on the seventh day of the seventh month.
The fifth poem on Tanabata. Looking up through a gap in the cloud, the poet finds the river's waves unquiet. The headnote places the poem at the site of the festival.
The poet, given by his office, is Onakatomi no Sukechika (954-1038), chief priest of the Ise Shrine. Onakatomi no Yoshinobu, poet of the hundred and ninety-sixth piece in Book Three, was his father, and Ise no Taifu of the two hundred and twenty-seventh his daughter. A poem by him also appears in Book Seven, at the seven hundred and forty-eighth.
The time is the night of the seventh day of the seventh month; the place is the site of the rites.
The occasion was the festival.

The first line means through a break in the cloud. It is the arrangement of Ujiyoshi's two hundred and thirty-third poem in Book Three, which watched for the moon through such a gap: the sky seen through a narrow opening.
The second line names the object. The word for the stars' meeting, used in the three hundred and fifteenth and sixteenth poems, appears here in a third.
The third line opens the view; Shunzei's two hundred and ninety-first poem uses the same phrase.
The word in the fourth line means a settled mind. Water that will not lie still is described as a mind that cannot be calm.
The poem closes on a noun. The excitement before a once-yearly meeting is given to the movement of the river. The two previous poems reflected the sky in water; this one treats the River of Heaven itself as water, so that a river in the sky is given the properties of one on earth.

Author

Onakatomi no Sukechika

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other