心あるをしまのあまの袂かな
月宿れとは濡れぬものから
月宿れとは濡れぬものから
- Roma-ji
-
Kokoro aru Ojima no ama no tamoto kana tsuki yadore to wa nurenu mono kara
- English Translation
-
They have hearts, it seems
the sleeves of the fisherfolk
of Ojima, for
they are not wet, though I said
lodge the moon in them, and stay
- Meaning
- They must have hearts, the sleeves of the fishers of Ojima: they are not wet because anyone told them to hold the moon, and they hold it.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 399
Headnote: on the theme of the autumn moon at the shore, for the contest at the Bureau of Poetry on the night of the fifteenth of the eighth month.
A run on the moon at the shore begins here. The topic is the autumn moon by the sea, and the poem was submitted to the contest held on the night of the year's most celebrated moon.
Kunaikyo was a lady-in-waiting to Retired Emperor Go-Toba and died young. This is her second appearance in this book, after the three hundred and sixty-fifth poem.
The time is the fifteenth night of the eighth month; the place is Ojima in Mutsu Province, in what is now Matsushima in Miyagi.
The occasion was submission to the contest.
The model is Minamoto no Shigeyuki's poem about the sleeves of the fishers gathering on the shore at Ojima, wet as these are. Shigeyuki is the poet of the twenty-eighth piece in Book One and the hundred and nineteenth in Book Two.
The first line means having understanding, a feeling for things. It is the counterpart of the phrase in Saigyo's three hundred and sixty-second poem about a heart that has none.
The place name in the second line sounds the word for regret.
The third line names the object. In the model the fishers' sleeves are wet with tears; here the moon lodges in them.
The fourth line means: saying, lodge here, moon. A quotative particle follows.
The construction at the close is concessive: and yet it is so. They are not wet in order to hold the moon, and they hold it all the same. An unintended effect is praised as a sign of feeling, and the model's tear-wet sleeve becomes a sleeve that reflects the moon.
- Author
- Kunaikyo
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- When I gaze at it the moon, a thousand thoughts come and then, over them and mine alone, no one's else the wind in the mountain pines
- On the mountain road over the dew on the moss I wake in the night and deep in the dark I lie and look at the moon up there
- I shall not forget the midnight sky of autumn over Naniwa though I look at the clear moon over some other inlet
- At Matsushima the sleeves of the salt-drawing fisherfolk in fall and is brooding at the moon the only way of being wet