Kage mireba nami no soko naru hisakata no sora kogiwataru ware zo sabishiki - Tosa Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

かげ見れば浪の底なるひさかたの
空こぎわたるわれぞさびしき

Roma-ji: Kage mireba nami no soko naru hisakata no sora kogiwataru ware zo sabishiki
English Translation: When I see the light,
beneath the waves lies the sky,
the far-reaching sky—
and rowing across it, I
am lonely beyond all words
Meaning: Looking at the reflection, I see the far-off sky lying beneath the waves—and how lonely I am, rowing across it.
Commentary: 26 The Seventeenth Day of the First Month: The Moon Reflected in the Sea

On the seventeenth day of the first month the clouds that had covered the sky cleared away, and the dawn moon was so lovely that the party set out and rowed on. All the while, the sea floor where the moon was reflected and the sky looked one and the same. The diarist thinks it no wonder that someone long ago wrote in Chinese verse, "The pole pierces the moon upon the waves; the boat presses on the sky within the sea."
The "certain person" who composes a poem in this scene is not named. There was a Chinese legend that a laurel tree grows in the moon, and this day's poem draws on it.
Hearing a certain person's "Minasoko no tsuki no ue yori kogu fune no sao ni sawaru wa katsura narurashi," another person went on to compose this poem.
While they were composing, the night gradually gave way to dawn. Then the steersmen said that black clouds had suddenly appeared, the wind would surely blow, and they should turn back; they returned, and before long rain began to fall. The diarist calls it a miserable business. On the eighteenth, too, the sea was rough, and the party stayed where it was.

The first line, "Kage mireba," means "when I look at the light of the moon and the image of the sky reflected in the sea." The second line, "nami no soko naru," means "lying at the bottom of the waves," and the third, "hisakata no," is a pillow word for "sora" (sky).
The fourth line, "sora kogiwataru," means "rowing across the sky reflected beneath the waves." In the final line, "ware zo sabishiki," "zo" is an emphatic particle, closing with the attributive form "sabishiki" of the adjective "sabishi" in a kakari-musubi construction.
Where the previous poem wittily took what touched the pole for the moon's laurel, this one takes up the same sky reflected in the sea and turns toward the speaker's own forlornness, as if rowing across a boundless sky. From a single scene, two poems of different moods are set side by side: a light-hearted conceit and the loneliness of the journey.
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Tosa Nikki
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