夜を寒み寝覚めて聞けばをしぞ鳴く
払ひもあへず霜や置くらん
払ひもあへず霜や置くらん
- Roma-ji
-
Yo o samumi nezamete kikeba oshi zo naku harai mo aezu shimo ya okuran
- English Translation
-
The night is so cold
that waking, I lie and listen:
the mandarin ducks cry—
too thick to brush away,
has frost settled on their wings
- Meaning
- Because the night is cold I wake and listen, and hear the mandarin ducks crying: has frost settled on them faster than they can brush it away?
- Commentary
-
Book Eight Winter Poems 478
Headnote: "Topic unknown."
The poet says that waking because the night is cold, he hears the mandarin ducks crying, and wonders whether frost has settled on their wings faster than they can brush it away. From the cries of the ducks heard on a winter night, the poem imagines the frost on their feathers and conveys the cold of the night.
Mandarin ducks were said to brush the frost from each other's wings, male and female, and the poem sings of a cold so severe that they cannot brush it all away. Like the frost on the ducks' outer feathers in 460, it sings of frost on the wings of water birds.
The poet is listed as "anonymous," and the composer's name has not come down to us. The text gives the poet as "yomibito mo," which is treated here as "anonymous."
The first line, "Yo o samumi," uses the "o ... mi" construction expressing cause: "because the night is cold."
The second line, "nezamete kikeba," means "when I wake and listen."
In the third line, "oshi" is the mandarin duck, and the particle "zo" and the attributive "naku" form a kakarimusubi pattern. The poem pauses here.
In the fourth line, "aezu" means "unable to finish": "too much to brush away."
In the last line, "ya" is an interrogative particle forming a kakarimusubi pattern with the attributive "ran": "has frost settled there?"
- Author
- Unknown Poet
- Source
- Gosen Wakashu
- Prev Poem
-
Kōri koso ima wa surashi mo Miyoshino no yama no takitsuse koe mo kikoezu
- Next Poem
-
Katsu kiete sora ni midaruru awayuki wa mono omou hito no kokoro narikeri