いつまでか涙曇らで月は見し
秋待ちえても秋ぞ恋しき
秋待ちえても秋ぞ恋しき
- Roma-ji
-
Itsu made ka namida kumorade tsuki wa mishi aki machiete mo aki zo koishiki
- English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- Until when was it that I looked at the moon with no tears to cloud it? I waited for autumn and have it, and still I long for autumn.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 379
Headnote: a poem on the moon, from the time when he presented a hundred-poem sequence.
A run on the moon follows. This poem turns on the paradox that the autumn waited for is still longed for. The headnote assigns it to a hundred-poem sequence.
The poet, given as former Archbishop, is Jien; this is his third appearance in this book, after the three hundred and fifty-second and sixtieth poems.
The time is an autumn night; no place is given.
The occasion was the presentation of the hundred-poem sequence.
An interrogative particle in the first line governs the past auxiliary in the third.
A negative connective in the second line gives the sense of without being clouded by tears. A time of looking at the moon with dry eyes is asked after as something past.
The third line completes the question.
The fourth line means: having waited for autumn and got it. Autumn was the thing awaited, and having it is not enough.
An emphatic particle governs the attributive form at the close. To long for autumn while it is here is a contradiction, and the dissatisfaction reaches its limit in a longing for what is present. It is the pattern of Arihito's hundred and ninety-ninth poem in Book Three, in which sleep would not come even after the cuckoo had been heard: the object attained and the state unchanged.
- Author
- Jien
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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
- 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
- I am tired of it this gazing: if there were a lodging outside fall but on moor and hill alike the moon is clear, and dwells there
- The light of the moon and the first wind of autumn as the night grows late I brood with all my heart, and spend the whole of it in that