Ima wa tote nenamashi mono o shiguretsuru sora tomo miezu sumeru tsuki kana

English Translation

"That is all," I thought,
and would have gone to sleep, but look—
it seems no sky
that just now was full of showers,
so clear the moon is shining

Meaning

I was about to give up and go to sleep—yet how clear the moon shines now, in a sky that looks nothing like the one that was full of showers a moment ago!

Commentary

Book Six Winter Poems 600

Headnote: "On the theme 'Winter Moon after Rain.'"
This is the tenth poem of the winter-moon sequence. The speaker was about to go to sleep, but the moon shines so clear that the sky seems nothing like the one full of showers moments before. According to the headnote, it was composed on the topic "Winter Moon after Rain."
The author, "Ryōzen Hōshi," is Ryōzen. He was a monk of Mount Hiei, and his dates and lineage are not known.
The scene is a winter night after the showers have passed, and the place is where one looks up at the clear moon.
The direct occasion is the topic "Winter Moon after Rain."

The first line, "ima wa tote," means "thinking, 'this is the end of it.'"
In the second line, "nenamashi mono o," "na" is the irrealis form of the perfective auxiliary "nu" and "mashi" a counterfactual auxiliary, meaning "I would have gone to sleep, had the moon not cleared." "Mono o" is a concessive conjunctive particle.
The third line, "shiguretsuru," means "which was full of showers just now," with "tsuru" as the attributive form of the perfective auxiliary "tsu," modifying "sora," sky, in the fourth line.
The fourth line, "sora tomo miezu," means "it does not look like that sky."
The last line, "sumeru tsuki kana," means "how clear the moon shines," with "ru" as the attributive form of the auxiliary of continuance "ri." The poem marvels at the sudden change from a sky of showers to a sky of clear moonlight, depicting the topic "Winter Moon after Rain" through the change of heart of one about to go to sleep. It moves from the moon hidden by scattered clouds in the poems before to a moon in a fully cleared sky, and it also answers 570 in this book, which sang of clouds clearing from a high peak after the first showers.

Author

Ryōzen

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other