風わたる浅茅が末の露にだに
宿りもはてぬ宵の稲妻
宿りもはてぬ宵の稲妻
- Roma-ji
-
Kaze wataru asaji ga sue no tsuyu ni dani yadori mo hatenu yoi no inazuma
- English Translation
-
The wind passes through
the low reeds, and on the dew
at their tips it will
not even lodge for a while
the lightning of the evening
- Meaning
- It will not so much as lodge on the dew at the tips of the low reeds the wind passes through: the lightning of the evening.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 377
Headnote: for a hundred-poem contest at the residence of the Regent and Chancellor.
The second poem on lightning. Where the previous poem made it a light that raises hope, this one takes its brevity itself. The headnote places it at Yoshitsune's hundred-poem contest.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Ariie, a son of Fujiwara no Shigeie, of the Rokujo house, and one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu. In Book Two he is the poet of the fifty-third and others and in Book Three of the two hundred and sixty-first; this is his first appearance in this book.
The time is an autumn evening; the place is a moor of low reeds.
The occasion was submission to the contest.
The first line means that the wind passes over.
The word in the second line names a low-growing reed, used in Korenori's three hundred and forty-fifth poem; the word after it means the tips, the same place as the rustling ends of the three hundred and seventy-third.
The particle in the third line means even on. Dew is small and, in the wind, unsteady, and the phrase strengthens the denial below.
The verb in the fourth line means for light to be reflected, and the one after it means to do a thing through: the light is gone before it has even settled on the dew.
The poem closes on the same noun as the one before, so that the two end alike. Bringing forward the smallest and least stable thing there is and finding the lightning briefer still is a contest in frailty, the method of Yoshitada's three hundred and forty-third poem, which set the morning glory above the dew.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Ariie
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Through the branches of the wood at Oaraki it cannot leak through and it makes us hope in vain the moon of an autumn night
- At the house that waits for the moon at daybreak, on the sleeve there, briefly and it makes us hope in vain the lightning of the evening
- Musashi's wide moor and I go, and there is no end to the autumn and what wind can it be that blows at the far edge of it
- Until when was it that I looked at the moon and no tears clouded it autumn came, and I have it and I long for autumn still