憂き身には眺むるかひもなかりけり
心に曇る秋の夜の月
心に曇る秋の夜の月
- Roma-ji
-
Ukimi ni wa nagamuru kai mo nakarikeri kokoro ni kumoru aki no yo no tsuki
- English Translation
-
For a wretched life
there is no good in gazing
none at all, for it
is clouded within the heart
the moon of an autumn night
- Meaning
- For one whose life is hard there is no use in gazing: the autumn moon clouds over inside the heart.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 404
Headnote: topic unknown.
A run on the moon and the clouding of the heart begins here. The moon outside is clear and the heart is not. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
The poet, given as former Archbishop, is Jien; this is his fifth appearance in this book, after the three hundred and ninetieth poem.
The time is a night in autumn; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The adjective in the first line means painful, hard to bear, the word used in the daughter of Shunzei's hundred and fortieth poem in Book Two.
The word in the second line means use, profit, used in Egyo's hundred and seventeenth poem in Book Two.
The third line is a flat declaration.
The fourth line is the poem's point. What clouds is not the sky but the heart, and the moon itself is clear. Moving the clouding from outside to inside puts the cause in the one who looks. Jien's own three hundred and seventy-ninth poem had the moon clouded by tears; here the same poet clouds it with the mind.
The poem closes on a noun, the ending recurrent through this book and its fourth appearance after the three hundred and seventy-fifth, eighty-fifth and ninetieth poems.
- Author
- Jien
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
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