Akeyaranu nezame no toko ni kikoyu nari magaki no take no yuki no shitaore

English Translation

Before the day has dawned
upon my bed where I lie waking
there comes a sound—
the bamboo by the fence
snapping beneath the snow

Meaning

Lying awake before the dawn has come, I hear it from my bed: the bamboo by the fence snapping under the weight of snow.

Commentary

Book Six Winter Poems 667

Headnote: "On the theme 'Hearing Snow Deep in the Night.'"
This is the eleventh poem of the snow sequence. From a bed where one lies awake before dawn, the sound is heard of bamboo by the fence snapping under the weight of snow. According to the headnote, it was composed on the topic "Hearing Snow Deep in the Night."
The author, "Minister of Justice Norikane," is Fujiwara no Norikane. A poet of the late Heian period who served as Minister of Justice, he wrote the poetic treatise Waka Dōmōshō.
The scene is before dawn, and the place is the bedchamber of a dwelling with a fence.
The direct occasion is the topic "Hearing Snow Deep in the Night."

The first line, "akeyaranu," means "not yet fully dawned," with "yara" adding the sense of completion and "nu" as the attributive form of the negative auxiliary "zu."
The second line, "nezame no toko ni," means "on the bed where I have woken in the night."
The third line, "kikoyu nari," means "a sound is heard," with "nari" as an auxiliary that infers from sound. The poem breaks after the third line, in inverted relation to the lower verse.
The fourth line, "magaki no take no," means "of the bamboo by the woven fence."
The last line, "yuki no shitaore," closes on a noun, naming branches or stems breaking under the weight of snow. The poem knows the unseen snow in the darkness by the sound of breaking bamboo, rendering the topic "Hearing Snow Deep in the Night" by grasping the depth of snow through sound. Where the preceding poem inferred snow on distant White Mountain from the coldness of a sleeve, this poem knows the depth of snow in the garden close by from the sound of snapping bamboo, so that two poems grasping snow at night through different senses, cold and sound, stand side by side.

Author

Fujiwara no Norikane

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other