Nagametsutsu omou mo sabishi hisakata no tsuki no miyako no akegata no sora

English Translation

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

Meaning

Even to think of it, gazing, is lonely: the capital in the moon, and the sky at daybreak.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 392

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The seventeenth poem on the moon, on the loneliness of thinking toward a city said to be in the moon. The original gives no fresh headnote.
This is Ietaka's fifth appearance in this book, after the three hundred and eighty-ninth poem.
The time is daybreak in autumn; the poet is on earth and his thought is on the capital in the moon.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The idea of a city in the moon appears in the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter and was used in poetry.

The verb in the first line means to gaze while lost in thought, with a continuative particle.
The particle in the second line carries the sense of even the thinking, so that not only looking but thinking is lonely.
The third line is a pillow word attaching to the word for moon, used in the two hundred and sixty-sixth poem of Book Three and the three hundred and twenty-first of this book.
The fourth line names the capital said to lie in the moon, the counterpart of the capital on earth and a place beyond reach.
The poem closes on a noun. Daybreak is the hour when the moon goes, and so the hour when the object of the thought is lost. After Jien's three hundred and seventy-ninth poem, on a moon clouded by tears, and the three hundred and ninety-first, on a moonlight changed in colour, this one sends its thought past the moon to what lies beyond it.

Author

Fujiwara no Ietaka

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other