Fukakaranu toyama no io no nezame dani sazo na ko no ma no tsuki wa sabishiki

English Translation

Not deep in the hills
and still, at a hut on the
nearer slopes, waking
in the night: how lonely it
must be, the moon through the trees

Meaning

Even waking at a hut on the near hills, not deep in the mountains at all, is like this: how lonely, then, the moon between the trees up there.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 395

Headnote: on the theme of the moon deep in the mountains, for the contest at the Bureau of Poetry on the night of the fifteenth of the eighth month.
The twentieth poem on the moon. The topic is the moon in the deep mountains, and the contest was held on the night of the year's most celebrated moon. The original gives no fresh attribution.
The poet is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune, as in the previous poem.
The time is the fifteenth night of the eighth month; the place is a hut on the low hills near the villages.
The occasion was submission to the contest, the same gathering named in the headnote to the fortieth poem of Book One.

The first line means: not deep. Though the topic is the deep mountains, the poem deliberately begins from hills that are not deep.
The word in the second line means the low hills near the villages, the counterpart of the deep mountains, used in Saigyo's two hundred and eighteenth poem in Book Three.
The word in the third line means waking in the night, and the particle means even. Even a waking on the near hills is like this, the poem concedes.
The fourth line means surely, doubtless, and strengthens the conjecture; here the poem passes to the deep mountains.
The closing line means that the moon seen between the trees must be lonely. From the shallow hills where the poet is, the loneliness of mountains he has not visited is reasoned out. The topic is never addressed directly, and the poem sets out the road toward it instead.

Author

Fujiwara no Yoshitsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other