白雲の幾重の峰を越えぬらん
馴れぬ嵐に袖を任せて
馴れぬ嵐に袖を任せて
- Roma-ji
-
Shirakumo no ikue no mine o koenuran narenu arashi ni sode o makasete
- English Translation
-
Where the white clouds lie,
how many ranges of peaks
might I now have crossed,
leaving my sleeves to the storm
whose ways I have never known?
- Meaning
- How many ranges of cloud-covered peaks have I crossed by now, leaving my sleeves to the mercy of storms I have never known?
- Commentary
-
Book Ten Travel Poems 955
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Composed as a travel poem."
This is the sixth of a sequence of poems on the road at nightfall and lodging for the night. Leaving his sleeves to unfamiliar storms, the speaker wonders how many ranges of cloud-covered peaks he has crossed, looking back on a road of mountain after mountain. According to the headnote, it was composed as a travel poem.
The author, Fujiwara no Masatsune, was a poet of the early Kamakura period and one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashū.
The scene is a journey across mountain after mountain, on a road through peaks veiled in white clouds.
The direct occasion is composing on the topic of "travel."
The first line, "shirakumo no," means "veiled in white clouds." Following "sue no shirakumo" in 939 and "shirakumo no kakaru tabine" in 950, mountains veiled in white clouds are sung of again.
The second line, "ikue no mine o," means "range upon range of peaks." It shows how many mountains have been crossed.
The third line, "koenuran," means "might I have crossed?" The perfective "nu" joined to the conjectural "ran," the poem breaks after this third line. Where 939 thinks of the peak to be crossed tomorrow, here the peaks already crossed are looked back upon.
The fourth line, "narenu arashi ni," means "to storms I have never known." It takes up the storm in the preceding poem that sounds nothing like those at home, and like "narawanu" in 950, it sings of the traveler's unfamiliarity.
The last line, "sode o makasete," means "leaving my sleeves to them." By inversion, the figure of a traveler powerless against the storm comes last. Like "sode fukikaesu akikaze" in 953, it sings of a traveler's sleeves blown by the wind.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Masatsune
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- The traveler's sleeves are blown back upon themselves by the autumn wind; lonely in the evening sun, the plank bridge along the mountain.
- The storm winds I heard in my old home do not sound anything like these; forget the one you left behind, here at Saya-no-Nakayama.
- Today once again on a plain I do not know night has overtaken me; from which of the mountains here will the moon rise into the sky?
- My old home as well in autumn keeps the evening as its keepsake now, sending only the wind to me on the bamboo plain of Ono.