Tanometaru hito wa nakeredo aki no yo wa tsuki mite nubeki kokochi koso sene

English Translation

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

Meaning

There is no one who has given me cause to expect him; and on an autumn night I cannot bring myself to look at the moon and then go to sleep.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 408

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The fifth poem on the moon and the heart: she cannot sleep though there is no one she is waiting for. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Izumi Shikibu was a mid-Heian poet; this is her second appearance in this book, after the three hundred and seventieth poem.
The time is a night in autumn; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The verb in the first line means to give another cause to expect something. It is the word of the three hundred and seventy-fifth and seventy-sixth poems, where the moon and the lightning raised a hope; here there is no one to raise it.
The concessive particle in the second line turns the poem: having said there is no reason to wait, it goes on to say she cannot sleep.
The third line fixes the scene.
The auxiliary in the fourth line expresses what ought to be: one might reasonably look and then sleep.
An emphatic particle governs the negative in the concessive form at the close: she cannot bring herself to it. Shirakawa's hundred and ninety-eighth poem in Book Three had someone sitting up for a visitor who would not come; here there is no one at all to sit up for, and the absence of a reason stands out the more.

Author

Izumi Shikibu

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other