雁鳴きて吹く風寒み唐衣
君待ちがてに打たぬ夜ぞなき
君待ちがてに打たぬ夜ぞなき
- Roma-ji
-
Kari nakite fuku kaze samumi karakoromo kimi machigate ni utanu yo zo naki
- English Translation
-
Wild geese cry above,
and the wind blows cold, so cold—
my fine Chinese robe,
longing for you, I can't wait—
no night passes unbeaten
- Meaning
- The wild geese cry and the wind blows cold; unable to bear waiting for you, there is not a night I do not beat my robe.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 482
Headnote: "A screen poem for the house of Middle Counselor Kanesuke."
This is the eighth poem of the fulling-block sequence. With geese crying and the wind turned cold, there is no night the speaker does not beat robes, unable to bear waiting for the beloved. According to the headnote, it was a poem for a folding screen at the house of Middle Counselor Fujiwara no Kanesuke.
The author was an early Heian poet and one of the compilers of the Kokinshū. He served as governor of Tosa and wrote the Tosa Diary.
The scene is an autumn night when geese cry, at a house where someone awaits a husband's return.
The direct occasion was composing a poem to accompany a painting on a folding screen at the house of Fujiwara no Kanesuke, a poet known as the Tsutsumi Middle Counselor. Screen poems were composed in the voice of figures in the painted scene.
The first line, "kari nakite," means "wild geese cry," announcing the deepening of autumn.
The second line, "fuku kaze samumi," is the "(o) ... mi" construction without "o": "because the blowing wind is cold." It uses the same "samumi" as 455 and 456, and the cold becomes the reason for beating robes.
The third line, "karakoromo," a fine robe, is the object of "utanu" in the last line.
In the fourth line, "gate ni" means "unable to bear," so "unable to bear waiting for you."
The last line, "utanu yo zo naki," is a double negative, "there is no night I do not beat," with the emphatic "zo" resolved by the attributive "naki." The nightly work of beating robes is overlaid with longing for someone who does not return. Whereas 481 thought of fulling at home from the traveler's side, with geese as messengers, this poem has the one who waits beating robes while hearing the geese, setting the awaited and the waiting side by side with the same birds.
- Author
- Ki no Tsurayuki
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- Wanting to forget even that it's autumn now as I watch the moon, how perversely at this hour someone beats upon their robes
- That in my old home they are beating robes, perhaps the wild geese in flight cry out across the far sky telling it to one who roams
- From fair Yoshino the autumn wind on the hills as the night grows late— cold in the old village now, someone beats robes, I can hear
- A thousand times struck, the fulling block's sound breaks off the dream I was in— on sleeves of one lost in thought the dewdrops shatter and fall