都をば心を空に出でぬとも
月見むたびに思ひおこせよ
月見むたびに思ひおこせよ
- Roma-ji
-
Miyako oba kokoro o sora ni idenu tomo tsuki mimu tabi ni omoiokose yo
- English Translation
-
Though you leave behind
the capital with your heart
adrift in the sky,
each time you look at the moon
send your thoughts back here to me.
- Meaning
- Though you leave the capital with your heart adrift, send your thoughts back to me each time you look at the moon.
- Commentary
-
Book Nine Parting Poems 893
Headnote: "When sending a fan painted with a moon to a woman going down to Tsukushi."
This is the second poem of the sequence of gifts to those leaving the capital. Though she leaves with her heart adrift, the poet asks that she send her thoughts back whenever she sees the moon, and sends the poem with a fan painted with a moon. According to the headnote, it was composed when sending such a fan to a woman going down to Tsukushi.
The author's name has not come down to us.
The scene is the sending off of someone bound for Tsukushi, and the place is the capital.
The direct occasion was the gift of a fan painted with a moon to a woman going down to Tsukushi.
The first line, "miyako oba," means "the capital." It is the same opening as 876, so poems of leaving the capital begin with the same word.
The second line, "kokoro o sora ni," means "with the heart adrift." It describes the distraction of setting out, and it answers the sky of the moon painted on the fan.
The third line, "idenu tomo," means "even if you go out," the perfective "nu" with "tomo" forming a concessive supposition.
In the fourth line, "tsuki mimu tabi ni," "tabi" plays on "each time" and on "journey." Each time she sees the moon and each stage of her journey are laid together, joining the moon of the fan to the road to Tsukushi.
The last line, "omoiokose yo," is an imperative meaning "send your thoughts this way." It shares the conceit of 877, which calls out "look at the moon" with the moon as intermediary, and in sending a fan it answers 868, so poems entrusting the feeling of parting to a gift return near the end of the book.
- Author
- Unknown Poet
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Do not forget it— though the sleeves in which it lodges are henceforth apart, this light of the midnight moon we wring from our sleeves as one.
- Sleeves that grieve to part have told me already now, before it has come, of the dew that lies ahead on the road of your journey.
- Though the road of parting sets you far beyond the clouds, in another world, let no wind out of that quarter pass without a word from you.
- Deeply dyed in color, this hunting robe for the road I have made for you— look on it as a keepsake until the day you return.