Tanabata no ama no hagoromo uchikasane nuru yo suzushiki akikaze zo fuku

English Translation

On the Weaver's night
the robes of heaven are laid
one on the other
and where they sleep it is cool
for the autumn wind is up

Meaning

The Weaver's robes of heaven are laid one over the other, and where they sleep a cool autumn wind is blowing.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 318

Headnote: composed as a Tanabata poem.
A run on the Weaver's robes begins here. This poem gives the wind in the chamber on the night of the meeting. The headnote gives the festival as the occasion.
The poet, given by his office, is Fujiwara no Takato, a mid-Heian poet who served as Deputy Governor-General of Dazaifu and was accomplished in music. In Book Three he is the poet of the sixty-ninth poem.
The time is the night of the seventh day of the seventh month; the place is in heaven.
The occasion was the writing of a Tanabata poem.
The name in the first line here means the Weaver star. Since she weaves, she is commonly written of with words belonging to cloth.

The first line names the Weaver.
The second line names the feather robe of a heavenly being, used in Sutoku's hundred and thirty-first poem in Book Two, where such a robe brushed the falling blossom.
The third line means laid one over another, with a rhythmic prefix. Two robes laid together stand for two people sleeping together, the counterpart of the single spread sleeve that means sleeping alone in Tsunenobu's hundred and ninety-seventh poem in Book Three.
The fourth line gives the wind of that night.
An emphatic particle governs the verb at the close. A cool wind blows where the meeting takes place; the coolness is a comfort and at the same time a mark of autumn deepening and of the parting to come. This poem of a meeting in heaven answers to the solitary bed on earth of the three hundred and thirteenth.

Author

Fujiwara no Takato

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other