Hito zo uki tanomenu tsuki wa megurikite mukashi wasurenu yomogiu no yado - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

人ぞ憂き頼めぬ月はめぐり来て
昔忘れぬ蓬生の宿

Roma-ji: Hito zo uki tanomenu tsuki wa megurikite mukashi wasurenu yomogiu no yado
English Translation: It's you who are cruel;
the moon that made no promise
comes circling round again,
not forgetting days gone by,
to this house deep in mugwort.
Meaning: It is you who are cruel. The moon, which never promised anything, comes circling back, still remembering the past, to this house overgrown with mugwort.
Commentary: Book Fourteen Love Poems IV 1281

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the twenty-sixth poem of the sequence of love poems on the moon. The moon that never promised comes round again, remembering the past, to this house overgrown with mugwort, the speaker says; it is you who are cruel. As with the preceding poem, the headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances are not recorded.
The author, "Fujiwara no Hideyoshi," served Retired Emperor Go-Toba as a guard of the north quarter and was esteemed as a poet; after the Jōkyū War he took holy orders under the name Nyogan.

The first line, "hito zo uki," means "it is you who are cruel," and the poem breaks after it. "Uki" takes the attributive form in answer to "zo."
In the second line, "tanomenu tsuki wa," "tanome" means "to make someone rely on": "the moon that promised nothing." It is contrasted with the person who promised yet does not come.
The third line, "megurikite," like "megurikinikeri" in the last line of 1277, speaks of the moon's return.
The fourth line, "mukashi wasurenu," means "not forgetting the past." It answers the question "have you forgotten?" in the preceding poem: the moon has not forgotten.
The last line, "yomogiu no yado," ends on a noun. A house overgrown with mugwort represents a home fallen into neglect after visits have stopped, and it bridges into the sequence on neglected dwellings that follows.
Author: Fujiwara no Hideyoshi
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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