Shirakawa no taki no itonami midaretsutsu yoru o zo hito wa matsu to iu naru - Gosen Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

白河の滝のいとなみ乱れつつ
よるをぞ人は待つといふなる

Roma-ji: Shirakawa no taki no itonami midaretsutsu yoru o zo hito wa matsu to iu naru
English Translation: The Shirakawa Falls,
their threads in rows, all tangled—
so it's for the night,
the twining, as they say,
that people wait and wait
Meaning: The threads of the Shirakawa Falls run side by side in tangles, and so, they say, it is for the night—the time of twining—that people wait.
Commentary: Book Fifteen Miscellaneous Poems I 1087

Headnote: "Reply."
The poet says that, just as the threads of the Shirakawa Falls run tangled and wait to be twined, people are said to wait for the night. Taking up the conceit of the falls' threads, he lets "yoru" mean both to twine thread and night, and answers that she should wait until night.
It is Tadahira's reply to Nakatsukasa's poem before it.
The poet, "the Chancellor," is Fujiwara no Tadahira. The fourth son of Fujiwara no Mototsune, he rose to Chancellor and Regent. Posthumously named Teishinkō, he is represented in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu by "Ogurayama mine no momijiba kokoro araba."

The first line, "Shirakawa no," opens with the same words as the preceding poem, marking the correspondence of the exchange.
The second line, "taki no itonami," means "the threads of the falls in rows," taking up "taki no ito" of the preceding poem.
The third line, "midaretsutsu," means "tangling all the while," with "tsutsu" continuation. It answers "midari ni" in the preceding poem as a word related to thread.
The fourth line, "yoru o zo hito wa," means "the night, people," with "yoru" joining night and the twining of thread as a related word. "Zo" is an emphatic binding particle closed by the attributive "naru" in the last line.
The last line, "matsu to iu naru," means "wait for, so they say," with "naru" the attributive of the hearsay auxiliary "nari," closing the "zo" of the fourth line.
Author: Fujiwara no Tadahira
Source: Gosen Wakashu
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