白雲のたなびきわたるあしひきの
山のかけはし今日や越えなん
山のかけはし今日や越えなん
- Roma-ji
-
Shirakumo no tanabikiwataru ashihiki no yama no kakehashi kyō ya koenan
- English Translation
-
Where the white clouds lie
trailing far across the heights
of the rugged hills,
the plank bridge along the mountain—
shall I cross it on this day?
- Meaning
- The plank road clinging to the mountain, where white clouds trail far across the slopes: is today the day I must cross it?
- Commentary
-
Book Ten Travel Poems 906
Headnote: "Topic unknown."
This is the second of a sequence of travel poems by poets of the Heian period. Facing a plank road along a mountain veiled in trailing white clouds, the speaker wonders whether today he must cross it, the mind of a traveler before a steep mountain path. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
No author is named, and the poem continues from the preceding one as a work of Ki no Tsurayuki. Tsurayuki was a poet of the early Heian period. He was one of the compilers of the Kokin Wakashū, wrote its kana preface, and was the author of the Tosa Diary.
The scene is a journey, at a place looking up at a plank road on a mountain veiled in white clouds.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
The first line, "shirakumo no," means "white clouds," first conveying the height and distance of the mountain.
The second line, "tanabikiwataru," means "trailing far and wide." "Wataru" indicates an action extending over a broad area. It is the same scene as "the mountains where white clouds trail" in 901, and mountains veiled in white cloud are set again as the image of distance on a journey.
The third line, "ashihiki no," is a pillow word for "mountain."
The fourth line, "yama no kakehashi," is a road built by laying planks along a steep mountain cliff. A precarious path hung high among the clouds is brought to mind.
The last line, "kyō ya koenan," means "shall I cross it today?" Answering the particle "ya," "nan," the intensive "nu" in its irrealis form "na" with the conjectural "n," closes in the attributive form. Where 902 imagines "yamaji koyuran" from the side of the one left behind, this poem speaks from the traveler's own position before the crossing.
- Author
- Ki no Tsurayuki
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- There in Suruga, by the slopes of Mount Utsu, in waking hours, nor even in my dreams at night, do I meet the one I love.
- Pillowed on the grass, I feel the evening wind has turned cold at last; where I hear them beating cloth, should I ask there for lodging?
- On the eastern road, at Saya-no-Nakayama, not clearly at all can I see the cloud-veiled distance— shall I end my days out there?
- Should I, after all, hold resentment toward that one? O bird of the capital, for not even "Are you well?" do I ever hear them ask.