Kumo wa mina haraihatetaru akikaze o matsu ni nokoshite tsuki o miru kana

English Translation

It has swept the clouds
away, every one of them
and I leave the wind
of autumn there in the pines
and go on watching the moon

Meaning

The autumn wind has swept every cloud away; I leave it behind in the pines and look at the moon.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 418

Headnote: from the time when he presented a fifty-poem sequence.
Following the run on cloud and moon, the poem leaves the wind that cleared the sky behind in the pines and turns to the moon. The headnote assigns it to a fifty-poem sequence.
The poet, given as Regent and Chancellor, is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune; he appears in this book at the three hundred and ninety-third and others.
The time is a night in autumn; the place is where pines grow.
The occasion was the presentation of the fifty poems.

The verb in the second line means to do a thing through to the end. Tsunenobu's four hundred and eleventh poem had the wind sweeping the cloud; here the sweeping is over.
The third line names the wind.
The fourth line means leaving it in the pines. The wind, its work done, is left behind as a sound among the trees while the poet turns to the moon, so that wind and moon are divided by function.
The poem closes on an exclamatory particle. The four hundred and eleventh and twelfth poems had the wind reveal the moon; this one sets the wind aside and faces the moon alone. There is craft in the disposal of the wind, and in the poem that follows the pine wind will unsettle the heart instead.

Author

Fujiwara no Yoshitsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other