Kaze wataru yamada no io o moru tsuki ya honami ni musubu kōri naruramu

English Translation

The wind goes across
and the moon that leaks in through
the hut in the field
can it be ice that has formed
on the waves of ripened grain

Meaning

The moonlight that leaks into the hut in the hill field where the wind goes over: is it ice formed on the waves of the ripening grain?

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 426

Headnote: on the theme of viewing the moon from a house in the fields, at the Bureau of Poetry on the night of the fifteenth of the eighth month, 1204.
A run of poems on watching the moon from a hut in the fields begins here. The topic is that watching, and the poem was written at a gathering held on the night of the year's most celebrated moon.
The poet is recorded only by the office of former Chancellor, and no settled identification exists. The same designation is used in the two hundred and eleventh and seventy-sixth poems of this book.
The time is the fifteenth night of the eighth month; the place is a hut among the hill fields.
The occasion was submission to the gathering.
Such huts were rough shelters put up to guard the fields before the harvest, where a watcher slept and drove off birds and animals.

The first line means that the wind blows across, the phrase used in Ariie's three hundred and seventy-seventh poem.
The second line fixes the place.
The verb in the third line does double duty: light leaking through, and the guarding of a field. The hut exists to guard, and the moon comes through its roof, so that two senses meet in one place. An interrogative particle follows and governs the auxiliary at the close.
The fourth line names the ears of grain moving like waves, and the verb after it means for ice to form.
The closing line asks whether it is ice. The whiteness of moonlight is taken for ice, the recurrent device of mistaking one white thing for another.

Author

The Former Chancellor

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other