Meguriawamu kagiri wa itsu to shiranedomo tsuki na hedate so yoso no ukigumo - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

めぐりあはむ限りはいつと知らねども
月な隔てそよその浮雲

Roma-ji: Meguriawamu kagiri wa itsu to shiranedomo tsuki na hedate so yoso no ukigumo
English Translation: When we'll meet again
as the moon comes circling round,
I cannot yet know,
but do not screen off the moon,
drifting clouds from far away.
Meaning: I do not know when we will meet again, as the moon comes round in its course; but you drifting clouds from elsewhere, do not come between me and the moon.
Commentary: Book Fourteen Love Poems IV 1272

Headnote: "For the Poetry Contest in Fifteen Hundred Rounds."
This is the seventeenth poem of the sequence of love poems on the moon. I do not know when we will meet again, the speaker says, but you drifting clouds from elsewhere, do not screen off the moon. According to the headnote, it was submitted to the Poetry Contest in Fifteen Hundred Rounds.
The author, "the Regent and Grand Minister," is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune. A son of the Chancellor Kujō Kanezane, he rose to regent and grand minister and was called the Go-Kyōgoku Regent. He wrote the Japanese preface to the Shinkokinshū.
The Poetry Contest in Fifteen Hundred Rounds, the largest in history, was arranged by Retired Emperor Go-Toba, who in Kennin 1 (1201) had thirty poets each compose a hundred-poem sequence and over the following year had the poems matched in fifteen hundred rounds and judged.
The poem draws on Tachibana no Tadamoto's poem in Miscellaneous Poems I of the Shūishū, "Do not forget me, though we be as far apart as the clouds, until we meet again as the moon comes round in the sky." That poem also appears in The Tales of Ise and expresses the heart that awaits reunion, as the moon returns in its course, however far apart the lovers may be.

The first line, "meguriawamu," means "to meet again, as the moon comes round." It takes up "meguriau made," the last line of the foundation poem.
The second line, "kagiri wa itsu to," means "when that time will be."
The third line, "shiranedomo," is concessive: "though I do not know."
The fourth line, "tsuki na hedate so," is a prohibition in the "na ... so" form: "do not come between me and the moon." It is a wish at least to keep seeing the moon that links the two until the day of reunion.
The last line, "yoso no ukigumo," ends on a noun as an address. The drifting clouds, which have nothing to do with the lovers, are overlaid with whatever obstructs their love. The poem by Minamoto no Michiteru, 1275, closes with the same last line.
Author: Fujiwara no Yoshitsune
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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