水上や絶え絶え凍る岩間より
清滝川に残る白波
清滝川に残る白波
- Roma-ji
-
Minakami ya taedae kōru iwama yori kiyotakigawa ni nokoru shiranami
- English Translation
-
Upstream at the source,
from between the rocks where ice
has formed in patches,
still left on the Kiyotaki
the white waves flow
- Meaning
- Up at the source the ice has formed in patches among the rocks, and from between them the white waves still flow on down the Kiyotaki River.
- Commentary
-
Book Six Winter Poems 634
Headnote: "When I presented fifty poems."
This is the sixth poem of the ice sequence. Upstream the rocks are frozen in patches, and the water flowing out from between them remains as white waves on the Kiyotaki River. According to the headnote, it was composed when a set of fifty poems was presented.
The author is not named in the original and continues from the preceding poem as Fujiwara no Yoshitsune. A son of the Regent Kujō Kanezane, he rose to Regent and Chancellor and wrote the Japanese preface to the Shin Kokin Wakashū.
The scene is winter with the upper reaches frozen, and the place is the Kiyotaki River in Yamashiro Province.
The direct occasion is the presentation of a fifty-poem set. The headnote does not record for which gathering the fifty poems were composed.
The first line, "minakami ya," means "upstream at the source," with "ya" as an interjectory particle marking the place with feeling. As with "minakami wa" in 554 of this book, the speaker's thoughts turn from the river before him to the unseen upper reaches.
The second line, "taedae kōru," means "frozen in patches."
The third line, "iwama yori," means "from between the rocks," the word "iwama" set here again after 631 and 632 in this book.
The fourth line, "kiyotakigawa ni," names a poetic place in Yamashiro Province, the Kiyotaki River flowing at the foot of Mount Atago: "on the Kiyotaki River."
The last line, "nokoru shiranami," closes on a noun, naming the white waves rising on the current left unfrozen. Even as the upper reaches freeze in patches, the water that remains unfrozen shows as white waves, contrasting what freezes with what remains. Where 631 in this book heard the sound of a mountain stream freezing and breaking, this poem sees the white waves of a current left unfrozen, rendering the same water among the rocks once in sound and once in color.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Yoshitsune
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Vanishing, returning, wandering among the rocks, the foam upon the water finds a lodging for a while in the thin ice
- On my pillow, on my sleeves, my tears have frozen into ice, and to the dreams I cannot form the storm wind comes to call
- The ice upon the sleeve spread out to sleep alone is bound up tight; on nights I cannot sleep at ease how short the dreams become
- The Lady of the Bridge has spread her single robe upon the narrow mat; her night of waiting all in vain, the dawn breaks at Uji