Yamazato ni tsuki wa miru ya to hito wa kozu sora yuku kaze zo ko no ha o mo tou - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

山里に月は見るやと人は来ず
空行く風ぞ木の葉をも訪ふ

Roma-ji: Yamazato ni tsuki wa miru ya to hito wa kozu sora yuku kaze zo ko no ha o mo tou
English Translation: To the mountain home,
asking 'Do you see the moon?'
no one comes to call—
only the wind crossing the sky
visits even the leaves.
Meaning: No one comes to my mountain home to ask whether I am watching the moon—only the wind crossing the sky comes calling, even on the leaves of the trees.
Commentary: Book Sixteen Miscellaneous Poems I 1520

Headnote: "On the spirit of 'The Moon at a Mountain Dwelling,' when I presented a fifty-poem sequence."
This is the seventh and last poem of the sequence thinking of others through the moon. No one comes to the mountain village to ask whether he is watching the moon; only the wind crossing the sky visits, even the leaves of the trees. According to the headnote, it was composed on the topic "The Moon at a Mountain Dwelling" when he presented a fifty-poem sequence to Retired Emperor Go-Toba.
The author, "Former Archbishop Jien," is Jien. The son of Fujiwara no Tadamichi and younger brother of Kujō Kanezane, he served four times as head of the Tendai school and wrote the historical treatise Gukanshō.
"The Moon at a Mountain Dwelling" is a topic on the moon seen from a dwelling in a mountain village.

The first line, "yamazato ni," presents a dwelling in the mountains far from other people.
The second line, "tsuki wa miru ya to," means "asking whether I see the moon." The same question that an intimate friend asked in the headnote of 1516 in this book, "have you been looking at the moon lately?", here no one comes to ask.
The third line, "hito wa kozu," declares, "no one comes," and the poem breaks after the third line. Like "hito wa kode," the third line of the preceding poem, it sings of someone who does not visit.
The fourth line, "sora yuku kaze zo," refers to the wind crossing the sky. The particle "zo" is closed by "tou" in the last line.
The last line, "ko no ha o mo tou," closes the kakari-musubi of the particle "zo" with the attributive form "tou." The particle "mo" shows the contrast that though no person comes, the wind visits even the leaves, closing the sequence of waiting for others under the moon.
Author: Jien
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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