水鳥の鴨のうきねのうきながら
波の枕に幾夜寝ぬらん
波の枕に幾夜寝ぬらん
- Roma-ji
-
Mizutori no kamo no ukine no ukinagara nami no makura ni ikuyo nenuran
- English Translation
-
Like the waterfowl,
the wild ducks sleeping afloat,
drifting in my sorrow,
with the waves for my pillow
how many nights have I slept?
- Meaning
- Like the wild ducks that sleep afloat upon the water, I drift in sorrow—how many nights have I slept with the waves for my pillow?
- Commentary
-
Book Six Winter Poems 653
Headnote: "When I presented a hundred-poem sequence to Retired Emperor Horikawa."
This is the second poem of the waterfowl sequence. Like wild ducks sleeping afloat, the speaker has slept in sorrow with the waves for a pillow, and wonders for how many nights. According to the headnote, it was composed when a hundred-poem sequence was presented to Emperor Horikawa.
The author, "Kawachi," is known by a lady-in-waiting's name. As there is no settled view of whom it refers to, the designation in the original is used. "Kawachi" is a court name taken from the name of a province.
The scene is a winter night, and the place is a waterside where wild ducks float.
The direct occasion is the hundred-poem sequence presented to Emperor Horikawa, known as the Horikawa Hundred-Poem Sequences.
The first line, "mizutori no," modifies "kamo," wild ducks, in the second line.
In the second line, "kamo no ukine no," "ukine" means waterfowl sleeping while floating on the water. "No" expresses likeness, "like the floating sleep of wild ducks," and runs on into the third line.
In the third line, "ukinagara," "uki" carries both "floating" and "sorrowful." Repeating the "uki" of "ukine" in the second line, it shifts the sense from the "floating" of floating sleep to "sorrow."
The fourth line, "nami no makura ni," means "with the waves for a pillow," depicting ducks sleeping on the water.
The last line, "ikuyo nenuran," means "how many nights have I slept?" with "nu" perfective and "ran" conjectural. The poem lays over the floating sleep of wild ducks a self that sleeps alone in sorrow. Following the preceding poem's mandarin duck sleeping alone, this poem sings of wild ducks sleeping afloat, the two standing side by side in entrusting the lament of lonely sleep to the sleeping forms of waterfowl. The next poem, 654, likewise sings of wild ducks crying in a river pool.
- Author
- Kawachi
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- Where the wind blows chill on the rocky shore of Toshima, the flocks of plovers— their rising and settling follow the heart of the waves
- How vain it is! For how many nights, then, on the flowing water does it strive to write the count— the mandarin duck sleeping alone?
- In Yoshino, where the Natsumi River lies in a still pool, the wild ducks can be heard crying in the shadow of the hills
- Over my bedchamber it spreads one sheltering bough— outside the house, on the broad-leaved oak I hear the hail come down