Yama no ha ni kumo no yokogiru yoi no ma wa idete mo tsuki zo nao matarekeru

English Translation

Across the ridgeline
a cloud goes over, and so
in the early night
the moon has come out, and still
I find I wait for it yet

Meaning

While a cloud is crossing the ridge in the early night, the moon may rise and I find I am waiting for it still.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 414

Headnote: topic unknown.
The fourth poem pairing cloud with the moon: the moon has risen and the waiting goes on. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
The Monk Doin was a poet of the late Heian period, whose lay name was Fujiwara no Atsuyori. He is remembered for the devotion to poetry he kept up into old age. A poem by him appears in Book Nine, at the eight hundred and eighty-eighth.
The time is the early part of a night in autumn; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The first line names the line where the hills meet the sky, the place the moon rises from.
The second line has a cloud crossing it. The previous poem found the moon through a break in the cloud; here the cloud hides it.
The third line gives the hour.
The particle in the fourth line is concessive: the moon has risen, and yet.
The auxiliary at the close is spontaneous in force: one waits without meaning to. To be still waiting after the moon has risen is to be waiting because it is hidden, so that the waiting has no end. It is the pattern of Arihito's hundred and ninety-ninth poem in Book Three, where sleep would not come even after the cuckoo had been heard: the condition outlasting its object.

Author

The Monk Doin

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other