Sarashina ya obasuteyama no ariake no tsukizu mo mono o omou koro kana - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

更級や姨捨山の有明の
つきずもものを思ふころかな

Roma-ji: Sarashina ya obasuteyama no ariake no tsukizu mo mono o omou koro kana
English Translation: Sarashina, where
on Mount Obasute lingers
the moon of daybreak,
endlessly, like that moon, these days
I am lost in brooding thought.
Meaning: Like the moon lingering at dawn over Mount Obasute in Sarashina, these days my brooding thoughts of love never come to an end.
Commentary: Book Fourteen Love Poems IV 1257

Headnote: "Topic unknown."
This is the second poem of the sequence of love poems on the moon. Like the dawn moon over Mount Obasute in Sarashina, the speaker says, these days my brooding never ends. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author, "Ise," was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tsugukage, Governor of Ise, and a lady-in-waiting to Fujiwara no Onshi, consort of Emperor Uda. She is one of the Thirty-Six Immortal Poets.
Mount Obasute, in Sarashina District of Shinano Province, is a poetic place famed for its moon. Since the anonymous poem in Miscellaneous Poems I of the Kokinshū, "My heart cannot be consoled, seeing the moon shine on Mount Obasute in Sarashina", poets have often set an inconsolable heart beside the moon of Obasute, and this poem draws on that model. The Tales of Yamato relate the legend of the abandoned old woman connected with that Kokinshū poem.

In the first line, "sarashina ya," "ya" is exclamatory, calling up the name of the poetic place. It opens in the same way as "Sarashina ya Obasuteyama" in the Kokinshū poem.
The second line, "obasuteyama no," is the mountain renowned for its moon.
The third line, "ariake no," is the moon that remains in the sky after daybreak. The first three lines form a preface that leads to "tsuki," moon, and so to "tsukizu" in the fourth line.
In the fourth line, "tsukizu mo mono o," "tsuki" is a pivot word meaning both the dawn "moon" and "coming to an end," here negated: "without end."
The last line, "omou koro kana," means "these days I brood." Against the background of the inconsolable moon of Obasute, the poem closes on unending thoughts of love. Mitsune's poem, 1259, also sings of the moon of Sarashina and draws on the same Kokinshū poem.
Author: Ise
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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