Tsuki dani mo nagusamegataki aki no yo no kokoro mo shiranu matsu no kaze kana

English Translation

When even the moon
cannot console me, on these
nights of the autumn
it knows nothing of my heart
and blows, the wind in the pines

Meaning

On an autumn night when not even the moon can console me, the wind in the pines blows, knowing nothing of my heart.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 419

Headnote: when he had fifty poems on the moon written at his residence.
Moon and pine wind again, but here the wind is what unsettles. The headnote assigns the poem to a set of fifty on the moon written at his own house. The original gives no fresh attribution.
The poet is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune, as in the previous poem.
The time is a night in autumn; the place is where pines grow.
The occasion was the set of fifty poems.

The particle in the first line means even. The moon is the standard comfort, and even it does not comfort.
The suffix in the second line means hard to do.
The third line fixes the scene.
The fourth line means knowing nothing of the speaker's heart, so that the wind is given the character of something without understanding. It is the form of Yorimune's three hundred and eighty-fourth poem, on a moon that will not tell one watcher from another, turned here upon the wind.
The poem closes on a noun. The previous poem left the wind in the pines and turned to the moon; here the moon is not enough and the wind blows on above it. The two handle one material through opposite offices, comfort and disturbance.

Author

Fujiwara no Yoshitsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other