鳰の海や月の光のうつろへば
波の花にも秋は見えけり
波の花にも秋は見えけり
- Roma-ji
-
Nio no umi ya tsuki no hikari no utsuroeba nami no hana ni mo aki wa miekeri
- English Translation
-
On the grebe's own lake
when the light of the moon shifts
and moves on the waves
even in the foam's flowers
the autumn can be seen now
- Meaning
- On the grebes' lake, as the moonlight moves across it, autumn shows even in the flowers of the waves.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 389
Headnote: on the theme of the moon at the lakeside, for a contest at the Bureau of Poetry.
The fourteenth poem on the moon. The topic is the moon beside a lake, and autumn is seen in the moonlight on the water.
Fujiwara no Ietaka was one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu; this is his fourth appearance in this book, after the two hundred and eighty-ninth, ninety-second and three hundred and seventy-sixth poems.
The time is a night in autumn; the place is Lake Biwa in Omi Province, called the grebes' lake.
The occasion was submission to the contest.
The first line raises the name with an exclamatory particle.
The second line names the object.
The verb in the third line means both to move across and to fade in colour, so that light travelling over water and the turning of autumn colours are laid together. In the hundred and thirty-seventh and fifty-seventh poems of Book Two it meant the fading of flowers.
The phrase in the fourth line names breaking white water seen as blossom; waves and flowers are joined in the hundred and thirty-second poem of Book Two as well. The particle carries the sense of even there.
The poem closes on a flat declaration. Autumn is said to show in waves that have no colour of their own, which is the form of Hideyoshi's two hundred and ninetieth poem, where autumn was seen in a colourless wind.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Ietaka
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Who is it tonight with the wind through the bamboo go through him, watching the moon above the summits of Yoshino, I wonder
- When I see the moon I cannot have done thinking the hills are so high and of what year is the snow that is lying up there now
- As the night grows late there will be no smoke: do not look at the bay there with reproach until the end you moon of an autumn night
- Autumn is a thing reason allows, and even so I cannot bear these tears: for the katsura in the moon has changed its light