Tsuki o nao matsuramu mono ka murasame no hareyuku kumo no sue no satobito

English Translation

Are they waiting still
for the moon, I wonder, those
villagers who live
under the far edge of cloud
that is clearing after rain

Meaning

Are they waiting for the moon still, the villagers out at the far edge of the cloud that is clearing after the shower?

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 423

Headnote: on the theme of the moon after rain.
The topic is the moon once the rain has passed, and the poem thinks toward people beyond the retreating cloud.
Kunaikyo was a lady-in-waiting to Retired Emperor Go-Toba and died young. This is her third appearance in this book, after the three hundred and ninety-ninth poem.
The time is a night in autumn; no place is given, and the gaze goes toward a distant village.
The occasion was the set topic.

The first line names the object.
The second line joins an auxiliary of present conjecture to an exclamatory interrogative: are they waiting yet?
The third line names rain that falls hard and soon stops, the word used in the two hundred and fourteenth and fifteenth poems of Book Three.
The fourth line means cloud that is gradually clearing. Here the rain is lifting, and where the cloud is going it has not lifted yet.
The poem closes on a noun. The word for the far end is the one used in the three hundred and seventy-eighth and four hundred and twenty-second poems. The speaker can see the moon and the people under the departing cloud cannot, the shape of Sanjo's three hundred and eighty-second poem, which thought of those beyond the mountains: someone elsewhere at the same hour.

Author

Kunaikyo

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other