長月もいく有明になりぬらん
浅茅の月のいとどさびゆく
浅茅の月のいとどさびゆく
- Roma-ji
-
Nagatsuki mo iku ariake ni narinuran asaji no tsuki no itodo sabiyuku
- English Translation
-
The Long Month as well—
how many dawns with the moon
has it come to now?
the moon upon the sedge grass
grows ever more desolate
- Meaning
- How many moonlit dawns has the Long Month already passed? The moon over the sedge grass grows ever more desolate.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 521
Headnote: "On the theme of late autumn."
This is the seventh poem of the late-autumn sequence. How many moonlit dawns has the Long Month already passed? The moon over the sedge grass grows ever more desolate. According to the headnote, it was composed on the theme of late autumn.
No author's name is given for this poem, which is placed as Jien's, continuing the attribution of the preceding poem. The author was a son of Regent Fujiwara no Tadamichi who served four times as head of the Tendai school and wrote the history Gukanshō.
The scene is the moonlit dawn near the end of the Ninth Month, in a garden or field overgrown with sedge grass.
The direct occasion was the theme of late autumn.
The first line, "nagatsuki mo," means "the Ninth Month too," with "mo" implying "even this last month of autumn."
In the second line, "iku" means "how many": the poet counts how many moonlit dawns have passed, taking up "ariake" from 520.
In the third line, "nu" is perfective and "ran" the attributive of the conjectural "ramu": "has it come to?" The poem breaks here.
The fourth line means "of the moon shining on the sedge grass," taking up the desolate sedge-grown scenes of 463, 464, 474, and 478.
In the last line, "itodo" means "all the more" and "sabiyuku" "growing lonelier." With each passing dawn the moonlight grows more desolate, conveying through the moon the feeling of late autumn as the Ninth Month nears its end. Where 490 punned on the month's name and the long nights to sing of waking, this poem counts the moonlit dawns of the Long Month to sing of autumn's approaching end, treating the same month on a different scale.
- Author
- Jien
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- Waking in the night of the Long Month, and my bed is so very cold— on the wind that blows this dawn has the frost begun to fall?
- Deep in autumn now, at dawn on Awaji's isle with the moon still up, sending off the setting moon blows the wind along the bay
- The magpies' bridge laid high across the clouds—autumn now drawing to close, in the depths of night does frost spread its chill across it all?
- When did it happen that you turned to autumn red, mountain cherry tree? was it only yesterday I mourned your blossoms falling?