変はらじな知るも知らぬも秋の夜の
月待つほどの心ばかりは
月待つほどの心ばかりは
- Roma-ji
-
Kawaraji na shiru mo shiranu mo aki no yo no tsuki matsu hodo no kokoro bakari wa
- English Translation
-
It cannot differ
whether one knows them or not
the hearts of us all
for that while when we are here
waiting for the autumn moon
- Meaning
- It must be the same in all of us, strangers and acquaintances alike: the heart, at least, while we wait for the autumn moon.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 407
Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The fourth poem on the moon and the heart: the heart that waits for the moon is the same in everyone. The original gives no fresh headnote.
The poet was a lady-in-waiting to Empress Shoshi, known as Joto Mon-in, consort of Emperor Ichijo; her dates are not recorded. In Book Three she is the poet of the two hundred and twenty-third poem, in an exchange with Murasaki Shikibu.
The time is a night in autumn; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The auxiliary in the first line expresses negative conjecture and an exclamatory particle follows: it will not differ. Tango's four hundredth poem opens in the same form, and the two share it.
The second line takes in acquaintances and strangers alike, the phrase used in Ietaka's hundred and thirteenth poem in Book Two, where the scent of blossom reached every sleeve.
The third and fourth lines mean: for the while that one waits for the moon.
The limiting particle at the close means at least this. All else may differ, and the waiting heart does not. As in Chomei's three hundred and sixty-sixth poem, which said no sleeve went unreached, the subject is what holds for everyone.
- Author
- Joto Mon-in no Koshosho
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- And where would it be that tonight's moon could be dimmed even Ogura with its name of little dark must have changed its nature now
- It is my own heart that has wandered off, I find since the night I looked alone, at the deep-night moon of an evening in autumn
- There is no one who has given me cause to hope and on autumn nights I have no feeling at all of sleeping once I have looked
- They wring out the sleeves of those who look, and what light is it that is joined to the moon on autumn nights that it should work on them so