Tanabata no koromo no tsuma wa kokoro shite fuki na kaeshi so aki no hatsukaze

English Translation

The hems of the robes
of the Weaver: have a care
and do not blow them
back and turn them inside out
you first wind of the autumn

Meaning

The hem of the Weaver's robe: take care, and do not blow it back, first wind of autumn.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 319

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, a Tanabata poem.
The second poem on the Weaver's robes. Where the previous poem gave the wind in the chamber, this one orders that wind not to disturb the clothes. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Koben was a lady-in-waiting and poet of the late Heian period; her dates are not recorded.
The time is the night of the seventh day of the seventh month; the place is in heaven.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The first line repeats the previous poem's opening and names the Weaver.
The word in the second line means the hem of a robe, and it also sounds the word for a spouse, the pivot used in Shunzei's three hundred and fifth poem. Under the plain sense, do not blow the hem back, lies another: do not come between the two of them.
The third line means: take care.
The fourth line uses a prohibitive construction, an order given to nature that can have no effect, as in Akahito's hundred and tenth poem in Book Two, which forbade the spring rain to fall, and Shunzei's two hundred and first in Book Three, which forbade the cuckoo its tears.
The poem closes on a noun, so that the one commanded comes last, in inversion. This is the sixth appearance of that ending in this book. The autumn wind, running since the two hundred and eighty-fifth poem, appears here as something that might spoil a meeting in heaven.

Author

Koben

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other