Haraikane sakoso wa tsuyu no shigekarame yadoru ka tsuki no sode no semaki ni

English Translation

I cannot brush it
away: no doubt the dew lies
as thick as all that
and does the moon lodge there too
on a sleeve as small as this

Meaning

I cannot brush it off; the dew must indeed lie thick. And does the moon lodge there as well, on a sleeve as narrow as mine?

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 436

Headnote: from the time when he presented a fifty-poem sequence.
This poem closes Book Four, the first book of autumn. The dew fills a narrow sleeve, and the moon lodges there besides. The headnote assigns it to a fifty-poem sequence.
The poet is Asukai no Masatsune, one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu. This is his third appearance in this book, after the two hundred and ninety-eighth and three hundred and sixty-fourth poems.
The time is a night in autumn; no place is given.
The occasion was the presentation of the fifty poems.

The suffix in the first line means to be unable to do a thing fully: the dew cannot be brushed away.
The word in the second line means surely, doubtless, used in Yoshitsune's three hundred and ninety-fifth poem.
The adjective in the third line means thick, abundant; the auxiliary of conjecture stands in the concessive form to answer the emphatic particle.
An interrogative particle in the fourth line gives the surprise: the dew alone is past brushing off, and does the moon lodge there too?
The poem closes on a noun, with a particle that works almost concessively: and the sleeve so narrow. The moon lodging in dew on a sleeve recurs through this book at the three hundred and eighty-sixth, four hundred and twenty-fourth and thirty-third poems; this one ends by raising the smallness of the place where it lodges, which suits the close of a book. The dew of tears and the light of the moon, the two chief materials of these poems, are gathered at a single point, the sleeve.

Author

Fujiwara no Masatsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other