Asajiwara hakanaku kieshi kusa no ue no tsuyu o katami to omoikakeki ya

English Translation

On the reed-grass moor,
the dew that fleetingly vanished
from atop the grass—
that I would think it a keepsake,
did I ever dream of that?

Meaning

In this palace grown into a moor of low reed grass, could I ever have dreamed that I would think of the dew that fleetingly vanished from the grass as a keepsake of the one who is gone?

Commentary

Book Eight Lament Poems 777

Headnote: "On seeing children gathering dew on the seventh day of the seventh month, when, during the reign of Retired Emperor Shirakawa, the empress was no more and her quarters were overgrown with nothing but grass."
This is the third poem of the sequence remembering the dead through the things of autumn. It says that she never dreamed she would think of the dew that fleetingly vanished from the grass on a moor of low reed grass as a keepsake. According to the headnote, after the empress died in the reign of Emperor Shirakawa, her quarters were overgrown with grass, and the poem was composed on seeing children gathering dew there on the seventh day of the seventh month.
A daughter of Taira no Munenaka, Governor of Suō, the author served as a palace attendant through four reigns, from Emperor Go-Reizei to Emperor Horikawa. The "empress" is Fujiwara no Kenshi, empress of Emperor Shirakawa, a daughter of Minamoto no Akifusa and the adopted daughter of Fujiwara no Morozane. She was the mother of Emperor Horikawa and died in Ōtoku 1 (1084).
The scene is the seventh day of the seventh month after the empress's death, set at the site of her quarters overgrown with grass.
The direct occasion is seeing children gathering dew from the grass on the day of Tanabata.
Tanabata, the seventh day of the seventh month, was held to be the night when the two stars, the Herdsman and the Weaver, meet once a year, and at court the star festival of Kikkōden was held.

The first line, "asajiwara," is a moor overgrown with low reed grass. It evokes a desolate place where no one lives, showing the empress's quarters overgrown with grass after her death.
The second line, "hakanaku kieshi," differs by only one word from the second line of the preceding poem, 776, "hakanaku okishi." Where the preceding poem speaks of dew settling, this one speaks of dew vanishing, and lays over it the fleeting death of the empress.
The third line, "kusa no ue no," corresponds to "sode no ue no" in the preceding poem. What was dew woven onto the sleeves of a jacket there becomes here the dew on the grass growing over the site of the palace.
The fourth line, "tsuyu o katami to," is nearly the same phrase as "tsuyu o katami ni" in the preceding poem. It sees the dew the children gather from the grass as a keepsake of the late empress.
In the last line, "omoikakeki ya," "ki" marks the past and "ya" is rhetorical, meaning "I never dreamed of it." In "kake" echoes the sense of dew falling upon something, so that it works as a word associated with dew. It is as though the first line of the preceding poem, "omoiki ya," had been moved to the end, and the two poems voice the same feeling as if exchanging their first and last lines. The next poem, 778, also sings of "asaji ga tsuyu," the dew of the reed grass, continuing the pairing of reed grass and dew.

Author

Taira no Nakako

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other