ことわりの秋にはあへぬ涙かな
月の桂もかはる光に
月の桂もかはる光に
- Roma-ji
-
Kotowari no aki ni wa aenu namida kana tsuki no katsura mo kawaru hikari ni
- English Translation
-
Autumn is a thing
reason allows, and even
so I cannot bear
these tears: for the katsura
in the moon has changed its light
- Meaning
- Grief in autumn is only reasonable, and still these tears are past bearing: even the katsura in the moon has turned, and its light with it.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 391
Headnote: topic unknown.
The sixteenth poem on the moon. Grief in autumn is only to be expected, and it is unbearable all the same. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
The poet, known as the daughter of Shunzei, was in fact his granddaughter and adopted daughter. This is her second appearance in this book, after the three hundred and seventy-fifth poem.
The time is a night in autumn; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The tradition that a katsura tree grows in the moon comes from Chinese books and is used in Masafusa's two hundredth poem in Book Three.
The first line means what stands to reason, so that grief in autumn is granted at the outset as only natural.
The verb in the second line adds the sense of doing a thing to the end and is negated, the form of Shigeie's three hundred and eighty-eighth poem.
The third line names what cannot be borne.
The particle in the fourth line carries the sense of even the katsura in the moon. As trees on earth take colour, so, the poem imagines, does that tree.
The closing line means: by a light whose colour has altered. The moonlight itself is said to carry the colour of autumn. Beginning from the language of reason and arriving at what reason cannot settle, the poem handles the relation of feeling to argument, as Saigyo's three hundred and sixty-seventh did in asking for a cause.
- Author
- The Daughter of Fujiwara no Shunzei
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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
- 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
- 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
- In the old village since the sparse-rooted clover came into flower night by night in the garden the moon has been moving on