Wakuraba ni machitsuru yoi mo fukenikeri sa ya wa chigirishi yama no ha no tsuki - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

わくらばに待ちつる宵も更けにけり
さやは契りし山の端の月

Roma-ji: Wakuraba ni machitsuru yoi mo fukenikeri sa ya wa chigirishi yama no ha no tsuki
English Translation: Once in a long while
you promised, and the evening
I waited has grown late;
was this, then, what you vowed,
O moon above the mountain rim?
Meaning: The evening I spent waiting on a rare promise has grown late. Is this what was promised, O moon above the mountain's rim?
Commentary: Book Fourteen Love Poems IV 1282

Headnote: "On the topic 'Love Before the Moon,' at the Bureau of Poetry on the fifteenth night of the eighth month."
This is the twenty-seventh poem of the sequence of love poems on the moon. The evening spent waiting on a rare promise has grown late, the speaker says; was this what was promised, O moon above the mountain's rim? According to the headnote, it was composed on the topic "Love Before the Moon" at the Bureau of Poetry on the fifteenth night of the eighth month.
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 Bureau of Poetry was an office for waka that Retired Emperor Go-Toba established at his palace in Kennin 1 (1201), and it was there that the Shinkokinshū was compiled. The fifteenth night of the eighth month is the night of the harvest moon, long celebrated for moon viewing.

The first line, "wakuraba ni," means "once in a while, rarely." It shows that the promise of a visit was a rare one.
The second line, "machitsuru yoi mo," means "the evening I spent waiting, too."
In the third line, "fukenikeri," "keri" marks realization: "has grown late." The poem breaks after this line.
In the fourth line, "sa ya wa chigirishi," "sa" means "so, like this," and "ya wa" is rhetorical: "is this what was promised?"
The last line, "yama no ha no tsuki," ends on a noun as an address. On the night of the harvest moon, the poem seems to reproach the moon for rising late, while overlaying resentment at a lover who promised yet does not come. It handles the topic "Love Before the Moon" through a double waiting, for both the moon and the person.
Author: Fujiwara no Yoshitsune
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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