大江山傾く月の影冴えて
鳥羽田の面に落つる雁がね
鳥羽田の面に落つる雁がね
- Roma-ji
-
Ōeyama katabuku tsuki no kage saete tobata no omo ni otsuru karigane
- English Translation
-
Over Mount Ōe
the setting moon's light shines cold,
and down to the fields
of Toba they descend now—
the voices of the wild geese
- Meaning
- The light of the moon sinking toward Mount Ōe shines cold and clear, and the wild geese descend, crying, to the paddies of Toba.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 503
Headnote: "When I presented a fifty-poem sequence, on the topic 'hearing geese before the moon.'"
This is the seventh poem of the wild goose sequence. In the cold clear light of the moon sinking toward Mount Ōe, the cries of geese descending to the paddies of Toba are heard. According to the headnote, it was composed on the topic "hearing geese before the moon" within a fifty-poem sequence.
The author was a son of Regent Fujiwara no Tadamichi and a younger brother of Kujō Kanezane. He served four times as head of the Tendai school and wrote the history Gukanshō.
The scene is late night toward dawn in autumn as the moon sinks, at the paddies of Toba south of the capital, with Mount Ōe in view to the west. Mount Ōe is a poetic place on the border of Yamashiro and Tanba, and Toba lies south of the capital near the confluence of the Kamo and Katsura rivers.
The direct occasion was the topic "hearing geese before the moon" within a fifty-poem sequence presented to Retired Emperor Go-Toba.
The first line, "Ōeyama," is the mountain west of the capital on the Yamashiro-Tanba border, marking the direction where the moon sets.
The second line, "katabuku tsuki no," means "of the moon sinking west," marking the time from late night toward dawn.
In the third line, "kage" is moonlight, cold and clear; it corresponds to "before the moon" in the topic.
In the fourth line, "tobata" are the paddies of Toba. Taking up "the paddies before the gate" of 502, it again sets the scene on the fields' surface. Toba is also where Retired Emperor Shirakawa stayed in 449.
The last line ends on a noun; "otsuru" means the geese coming down from the sky to the fields, and "karigane" is their cry, corresponding to "hearing geese" in the topic. Within a vast span—the moon sinking toward Mount Ōe in the west, the geese descending to the paddies of Toba in the south—the poem arranges cold moonlight and the geese's cry. In 502 geese in the sky longed for friends left on the fields; here the geese themselves descend to the fields, joining sky and paddy.
- Author
- Jien
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- At the break of dawn when the trailing banks of cloud part upon the wind, crossing over the mountains the voice of the first wild geese
- Bearing the white clouds upon their wings as they go, the wild geese in flight call for friends left on the fields before the gate, so it seems
- Have the gathered clouds been cleared by the wind of wings of the passing geese? in the sky where I hear them the moonlight shines crystal clear
- Through the gusting sky where the winds blow every way the first geese fly on— on their wings they make it sound, the autumn wind from all sides