Kasasagi no kumo no kakehashi aki kurete yowa ni wa shimo ya saewataruran

English Translation

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?

Meaning

Now that autumn is ending, does frost lie cold and white across the bridge the magpies lay among the clouds in the middle of the night?

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 522

Headnote: "When the Regent and Chancellor was a Major Captain and had hundred-poem sequences composed."
This is the eighth and final poem of the late-autumn sequence. With autumn at its end, the poet imagines frost lying cold across the magpies' bridge above the clouds in the depths of night. According to the headnote, it comes from hundred-poem sequences Fujiwara no Yoshitsune commissioned while a Major Captain.
The author's lay name was Fujiwara no Sadanaga; a nephew of Fujiwara no Shunzei, he became Shunzei's adopted son. He was appointed a compiler of the Shinkokinshū but died before it was presented.
The scene is the depths of night at autumn's end, in a night sky spanned by the River of Heaven.
The direct occasion was a hundred-poem sequence Fujiwara no Yoshitsune had poets compose while he was Major Captain of the Palace Guards.
The magpies' bridge comes from the Chinese legend that on the night of Tanabata magpies line up their wings to bridge the River of Heaven, so that the Weaver Maid can cross to meet the Herdsman.

The first line, "kasasagi no," introduces the magpies that bridge the River of Heaven in the Tanabata legend.
The second line, "kumo no kakehashi," is a bridge spanning the sky above the clouds, the magpies' bridge.
The third line, "aki kurete," means "autumn drawing to its close," showing that time has passed from Tanabata to autumn's end.
In the fourth line, the interrogative "ya" is bound to "ran" in the last line.
In the last line, "sae" means cold and clear, and "wataru," "all across," also echoes "crossing" as an associated word of the bridge; "ran" is the attributive of the conjectural "ramu." On the bridge that lovers crossed at Tanabata, frost must now lie cold at autumn's end—the change of seasons and its loneliness are entrusted to a scene in the sky. Like "will frost be settling" in 519, the poem closes the late-autumn sequence by guessing at frost, and from 523 the book turns to autumn leaves. Frost on the magpies' bridge also appears in Ōtomo no Yakamochi's poem 620 in Book Six.

Author

Jakuren

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other