Hitori nuru yamadori no o no shidario ni shimo oki mayou toko no tsukikage

English Translation

Sleeping all alone,
on the long and trailing tail
of the mountain bird
frost seems to settle and stray—
moonlight across my bedding

Meaning

On the long trailing tail of the copper pheasant sleeping alone, frost seems to settle and waver—the moonlight falling on my bed.

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 487

Headnote: "When I presented a hundred-poem sequence."
This is the second poem of the sequence on the moon and autumn nights. Moonlight falls on the bed so white that it seems frost has settled on the trailing tail of a copper pheasant sleeping alone. According to the headnote, it was composed as part of a hundred-poem sequence.
The author was a son of Fujiwara no Shunzei and one of the compilers of the Shinkokinshū who later rose to Provisional Middle Counselor.
The scene is an autumn night in the season of frost, at a solitary bed where moonlight falls.
The direct occasion was the composition of a hundred-poem sequence; in the Shinkokinshū this headnote often refers to Retired Emperor Go-Toba's First Hundred-Poem Sequences of 1200.
It takes as its source Kakinomoto no Hitomaro's poem in the third book of love poems of the Shūishū, "Like the long trailing tail of the copper pheasant, this long, long night—must I sleep it alone?"—also included in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu. The copper pheasant was said to sleep apart from its mate across a ridge at night, and so was a symbol of sleeping alone.

The first line, "hitori nuru," means sleeping alone, taking up the source's last line, "must I sleep alone."
The second line takes the source's second line directly, introducing the copper pheasant said to sleep apart from its mate.
In the third line, "shidario" is the long drooping tail. In the source it was a preface leading to the length of the night; here it serves almost as a real surface on which frost settles.
The fourth line, "shimo oki mayou," means it seems as if frost has settled, frost and moonlight intermingling. The image shifts from the dew on the sleeves in 486 to frost.
The last line ends on a noun, naming the moonlight on the bed and implying that it looks as white as frost on the pheasant's tail. Borrowing the source's pheasant tail and solitary sleep, the poem turns the lament of a long night into a cold, clear scene of moonlight likened to frost—an allusive variation. The lament of sleeping alone also echoes "how then shall I sleep alone through the long nights" in 457.

Author

Fujiwara no Teika

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other