Tanabata no ause taesenu ama no kawa ikanaru aki ka watarisomekemu

English Translation

Their meeting is not
broken off: the river of
heaven, and in what
autumn was it that they first
began to make the crossing

Meaning

The River of Heaven, across which their meeting has never failed: in what autumn did they first begin to cross it?

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 324

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, on the theme of Tanabata.
The twelfth poem on Tanabata, asking when the stars' meetings began. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Taikenmon-in no Horikawa was a lady-in-waiting and poet in the service of Empress Shoshi, consort of Emperor Toba; her dates are not recorded. She is the poet of the piece cited in the commentary to the fourth poem of Book One, about a Yoshino village under deep snow.
The time is the seventh day of the seventh month; the place is in heaven.
The occasion was the set topic.

The first line names the Weaver.
The word in the second line means an occasion of meeting; its second element is the word for a shallow crossing, so that it belongs with the river as well. The phrase after it means without a break.
The third line fixes the place.
An interrogative particle in the fourth line governs the auxiliary at the close: in what autumn?
The verb at the close means to begin doing a thing, with an auxiliary of past conjecture. The poem ends on a question that cannot be answered. Michitomo's ninety-sixth poem in Book Two asked who had planted the cherries and Kojiju's hundred and eighty-third in Book Three wondered at the hollyhock's two leaves; this belongs to that pattern of asking after origins. Reaching back to the beginning of the observance itself makes it unlike its neighbours in this run.

Author

Taikenmon-in no Horikawa

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other