Nagame wabinu aki yori hoka no yado mogana no ni mo yama ni mo tsuki ya sumuramu

English Translation

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

Meaning

I am worn out with gazing. If there were some lodging outside autumn; but on moor and hill alike the moon is clear, and lives there.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 380

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, a poem on the moon.
The second poem on the moon. The poet looks for somewhere outside the season and finds the moon everywhere. The original gives no fresh headnote.
This is Princess Shokushi's fifth appearance in this book, after the three hundred and eighth and others.
The time is an autumn night; no place is given.
The occasion was the presentation of the hundred-poem sequence.

The verb in the first line means to be worn down, to be troubled, used in Murasaki Shikibu's two hundred and fourth poem in Book Three of a wearying wait. Here it is the gazing itself that has worn her out.
The particle in the third line expresses a wish: if only there were. What is asked for is a refuge from a season.
The fourth line means anywhere at all, naming both places one might go.
The verb at the close means both that moonlight is clear and that the moon lives there; an interrogative particle and an auxiliary of present conjecture follow. By the double sense, that the moon is clear everywhere and dwells everywhere, the poem shows that there is nowhere to escape to. Michitomo's three hundred and seventy-fourth poem uses the same verb in the same two senses, and the two share it.

Author

Princess Shokushi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other