Wasureji na Naniwa no aki no yowa no sora kotoura ni sumu tsuki wa miru tomo

English Translation

I shall not forget
the midnight sky of autumn
over Naniwa
though I look at the clear moon
over some other inlet

Meaning

I shall not forget this midnight sky of autumn at Naniwa, though I come to see the moon clear over some other bay.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 400

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, on the autumn moon at the shore.
The second poem on the moon at the shore, a vow not to forget the sky at Naniwa. The original gives no fresh headnote.
The poet was a lady-in-waiting to Empress Ninshi, known as Gishumon-in, consort of Retired Emperor Go-Toba; her dates are not recorded.
The time is midnight in autumn; the place is Naniwa in Settsu Province, written of in the twenty-sixth and thirty-sixth poems of Book One.
The occasion was submission to the contest.

The auxiliary in the first line expresses negative intention and an exclamatory particle follows, so that the poem opens as a vow. Princess Shokushi's fifty-second poem in Book One used the same verb in asking a plum not to forget her; there it was a request to another and here an undertaking laid on the self.
The second and third lines name what is not to be forgotten.
The word in the fourth line means another bay, and the verb does double duty: a moon shining clear, and living in a place. It is the pivot of the three hundred and seventy-fourth and eightieth poems of this book.
The particle at the close marks a concessive supposition: even if she sees the moon elsewhere in time to come. It makes the moon of this place and hour particular, the stance of Narihira's hundred and fifth poem in Book Two, in which no night had ever been like that one.

Author

Gishumon-in no Tango

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other