更けゆかば煙もあらじ塩釜の
うらみなはてそ秋の夜の月
うらみなはてそ秋の夜の月
- Roma-ji
-
Fukeyukaba keburi mo araji Shiogama no urami na hate so aki no yo no tsuki
- English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- When the night grows late there will be no smoke left; do not look your fill at the bay of Shiogama, nor bear it a grudge, moon of the autumn night.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 390
Headnote: from the time when he presented a hundred-poem sequence.
The fifteenth poem on the moon, addressing the moon that lights the bay at Shiogama. The headnote assigns it to a hundred-poem sequence.
The poet, given as former Archbishop, is Jien; this is his fourth appearance in this book, after the three hundred and fifty-second, sixtieth and seventy-ninth poems.
The time is a night in autumn; the place is the bay of Shiogama in Mutsu Province, in what is now Shiogama in Miyagi, written of for the smoke of its salt-burning.
The occasion was the presentation of the hundred-poem sequence.
The first line is a supposition: if the night grows late.
The auxiliary in the second line expresses negative conjecture. The smoke of the salt fires dies away as the night deepens, so that there will be nothing left to look at.
The third line fixes the place.
The word in the fourth line does double duty, meaning both to look at the bay and to bear a grudge. A prohibitive construction stands with a verb meaning to do a thing to the end, so that two senses work at once: do not exhaust the sight of the bay, and do not exhaust your resentment.
The poem closes on a noun, so that the one addressed comes last, in inversion. It is the ending of the three hundred and seventy-fifth and eighty-fifth poems, its third appearance in this run. The wish is fitted to the place: let the moon shine before the smoke that the place is known for goes out.
- Author
- Jien
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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
- 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
- Autumn is a thing reason allows, and even so I cannot bear these tears: for the katsura in the moon has changed its light
- Gazing at it still even the thinking is lone far off in heaven the capital of the moon and the sky at break of day