さして行く山の端もみなかき曇り
心の空に消えし月影
心の空に消えし月影
- Roma-ji
-
Sashite yuku yama no ha mo mina kakikumori kokoro no sora ni kieshi tsukikage
- English Translation
-
The mountain's rim, where
the moon was bound, is all clouded
over now, and so
within the sky of my heart
the moonlight vanished away.
- Meaning
- The mountain ridge toward which I was heading was covered in cloud, and the moonlight vanished within the sky of my own heart.
- Commentary
-
Book Fourteen Love Poems IV 1263
Headnote: "Reply."
This is the eighth poem of the sequence of love poems on the moon, a reply to the preceding poem. The mountain ridge toward which the moon was heading was clouded over, the speaker answers, and the moon vanished in the sky of the heart.
The author is given as "Anonymous," and the name has not come down to us. This is the person to whom Murasaki Shikibu sent the preceding poem.
The main text writes the fourth line's "yama no ha" with the character for "leaf," but the meaning is the mountain's rim, and it is written so here.
In the first line, "sashite yuku," "sashi" is a pivot word meaning both "heading toward" and the moon's light "shining."
The second line, "yama no ha mo mina," takes up "iru kata," the setting place, from the preceding poem and names the mountain ridge where the moon sets, answering the reproach that his destination lay elsewhere.
The third line, "kakikumori," means "completely clouded over"; "kaki" is an intensifying prefix.
The fourth line, "kokoro no sora ni," takes up "uwa no sora" in the preceding poem and turns the sky into the sky of the heart.
The last line, "kieshi tsukikage," ends on a noun, the same word as "tsukikage o," the third line of the preceding poem. Not that his destination was plain, he pleads, but that his heart was clouded and the moon itself vanished; "kakikumori," clouded over, is set against the preceding poem's "sayaka," plain to see.
- Author
- Unknown Poet
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Prev Poem
-
Iru kata wa sayaka narikeru tsukikage o uwa no sora ni mo machishi yoi kana
- Next Poem
-
Ima wa tote wakareshi hodo no tsuki o dani namida ni kurete nagame ya wa seshi