Koyoi tare suzu fuku kaze o mi ni shimete Yoshino no take no tsuki o miruramu

English Translation

Who is it tonight
with the wind through the bamboo
go through him, watching
the moon above the summits
of Yoshino, I wonder

Meaning

Who is it tonight who feels the wind in the bamboo to the bone and watches the moon over the peaks of Yoshino?

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 387

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The twelfth poem on the moon, thinking of someone watching this same moon far off at Yoshino. The original gives no fresh headnote.
The poet, given by his rank, is Minamoto no Yorimasa, who served as a warrior and was accomplished in poetry, rising to the junior third rank. In Book Three he is the poet of the two hundred and sixty-seventh poem and in this book of the three hundred and twenty-ninth.
The time is a night in autumn; the place is Yoshino in Yamato Province, written of again and again in this anthology since the opening poem of Book One.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The fourth line of the text does not agree with the phonetic line given beside it; the reading of the text itself is followed here.

The first line asks who it is tonight. Sanjo's three hundred and eighty-second poem thought of people beyond the mountains, and this one also thinks toward a distant place.
The word in the second line names slender bamboo, and the line gives the sound of wind through it, the plant of Mototoshi's three hundred and seventy-third poem.
The phrase in the third line means to be felt to the bone, used in the three hundred and twenty-second and seventieth poems of this book.
The word in the fourth line means a high peak.
The poem closes with the same words as the three hundred and eighty-second, so that two poems reason in the same form about someone elsewhere at this hour, and stand together.

Author

Minamoto no Yorimasa

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other