Morotomo ni nagame nagamete aki no tsuki hitori ni naramu koto zo kanashiki - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

もろともに眺め眺めて秋の月
ひとりにならむことぞ悲しき

Roma-ji: Morotomo ni nagame nagamete aki no tsuki hitori ni naramu koto zo kanashiki
English Translation: Together with you
I have gazed and gazed upon
the autumn moon:
that I must be left alone
is the thing that grieves me
Meaning: Autumn moon that we have gazed on together again and again, how sad that from now on I will be left to watch you alone.
Commentary: Book Nine Poems of Lament 603

Headnote: "Composed when my fellow practitioner, the holy man Saijū, fell ill around autumn and seemed near his end"
Composed when Saijū, the holy man with whom the poet had traveled in religious practice, fell ill around autumn and seemed near death. How sad that I will be alone with the autumn moon we have gazed at together so often, he says. The grief of about to lose a friend with whom he traveled for many years and watched the same moon is entrusted to the autumn moon he will now see alone.
The author, "the Monk En'i," is Saigyō. His lay name was Satō Norikiyo, and he was a guard of the north quarters under Retired Emperor Toba, but at twenty-three he took the tonsure, traveled through the provinces, and left many poems. His personal collection is the Sankashū. He has a poem in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu.
The three poems from this one to the final poem, 605, form a sequence on Saijū's death. In this book 569 and 576 also open with "morotomo ni."

First line, "morotomo ni": "together." Poems 569 and 576 of this book open with the same words.
Second line, "nagame nagamete": the repeated verb conveys the length of the years spent gazing again and again.
Third line, "aki no tsuki": the moon the two gazed at together, the noun standing alone with feeling. The poem pauses here. The moon also appears in 560, 576 and 594 of this book.
Fourth line, "hitori ni naramu": "mu" is the attributive of the conjectural, "that I shall be alone."
Fifth line, "koto zo kanashiki": the emphatic "zo" closes with the attributive "kanashiki." It is the same last line as 575 of this book.
Author: Saigyō
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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