Minakami ni mizu ya kōri o musuburan kuru tomo mienu taki no shiraito

水上に水や氷を結ぶらん
くるとも見えぬ滝の白糸

Roma-ji: Minakami ni mizu ya kōri o musuburan kuru tomo mienu taki no shiraito
English Translation: Up beyond the source
has the water bound itself
into knots of ice?
neither spooling nor coming down,
the white threads of the waterfall.
Meaning: Has the water upstream knotted itself into ice? The white threads of the waterfall seem neither to come down nor to be spooled out.
Commentary: Winter Poems 555

Headnote: "Ice above a waterfall"
The topic is ice above a waterfall. The waterfall that poured down like white threads no longer seems to flow at all, and the poet wonders whether up at the source the water has been bound into ice. Likening the waterfall to white thread and stringing together words tied to thread, musubu and kuru, the poem tells of a waterfall frozen still.
Poem 500 in this book also ends with taki no shiraito, there a waterfall dappled with leaves falling in the withering wind. The flowing waterfall and the waterfall frozen still answer each other.

First line, “minakami ni”: minakami is the upper reaches of a river.
Second line, “mizu ya kōri o”: ya is a question particle that binds with ran in the third line.
Third line, “musuburan”: musubu is for ice to form, with an echo of tying thread, an associated word for the white thread of the last line. Ran is present conjecture, and the poem breaks after the third line.
Fourth line, “kuru tomo mienu”: kuru is a pivot word, to come flowing and to spool thread, also associated with the white thread.
Fifth line, “taki no shiraito”: the poem ends on a noun, the waterfall falling like white threads; it is the same last line as 500.
Author: Saigyō
Source: Sankashu
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