千たび打つ砧の音に夢覚めて
物思ふ袖の露ぞ砕くる
物思ふ袖の露ぞ砕くる
- Roma-ji
-
Chitabi utsu kinuta no oto ni yume samete mono omou sode no tsuyu zo kudakuru
- English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- Woken from my dream by the sound of a fulling block struck a thousand times, the dew on the sleeves of one lost in brooding shatters.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 484
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "On the theme of fulling cloth."
This is the tenth poem of the fulling-block sequence. Woken from a dream by a fulling block struck again and again, the speaker finds the dew on brooding sleeves shattering. The headnote continues from the preceding poem: it was composed on the theme of fulling cloth.
The author was a daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa who served as Kamo Priestess and studied poetry under Fujiwara no Shunzei.
The scene is an autumn night, in a bedchamber where the sound of fulling blocks carries.
The direct occasion was the theme of fulling cloth.
The first line, "struck a thousand times," echoes Bai Juyi's lines included under fulling cloth in the Wakan rōeishū: "In the eighth and ninth months, the nights are long; a thousand strokes, ten thousand strokes, without end."
The first line, "chitabi utsu," means struck countless times, showing the fulling block sounding all night without pause.
In the second line, "kinuta" is the block on which cloth is beaten, or the act of beating.
The third line means the dream was broken by the sound of the block, taking up the dreams hindered by fulling blocks in 476 and 477.
The fourth line, "mono omou sode no," the sleeves of one lost in brooding, is the same phrase as in 469, taking up the link between dew on the sleeves and brooding from the dew sequence.
In the last line, the emphatic "zo" is resolved by "kudakuru," the attributive of the lower bigrade verb "kudaku." In time with the strokes of the block, the tear-dew on the sleeves shatters; the intensity of brooding after waking is conveyed through this image of breaking dew. Joining sound and tears in a single motion, the poem layers a fulling-block poem with a dew poem.
- Author
- Princess Shokushi
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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
- 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
- The night has grown late— near the ridge of the mountains the moon shining cold, in a village far away the sound of robes being struck
- Late in the night's depth as the autumn draws to close, gazing at the moon, not one part of my sleeves spared, the dew has settled on them