曇りなき山にて海の月見れば
島ぞ氷の絶え間なりける
島ぞ氷の絶え間なりける
- Roma-ji
-
Kumori naki yama nite umi no tsuki mireba shima zo kōri no taema narikeru
- English Translation
-
From the cloudless peak,
when I gaze upon the moon
shining on the sea,
the islands, it seems, are breaks
in a plain of shining ice.
- Meaning
- Looking from the cloudless mountain at the moon over the sea, I see that the islands are the gaps in a sheet of ice.
- Commentary
-
Miscellaneous Poems 1356
Headnote: "In the same province, when I had built a hut and was living on a hill near the place associated with the Great Teacher, the moon was very bright and the sea could be seen without a cloud"
Living in a hut on a hill in Sanuki near a site associated with Kōbō Daishi, Saigyō saw the moon very bright and the sea clear of clouds. Looking from the cloudless hill at the moon over the sea, he sees the moonlit surface like a sheet of ice and the islands as its gaps.
Seeing the sea shining white in the moonlight as ice and the scattered islands as breaks in it, the poem makes a grand and vivid comparison against the real view of the islands of the Inland Sea below.
First line, “kumori naki”: cloudless, the clarity of the hill and moonlight.
Second line, “yama nite umi no”: from the hill, of the sea.
Third line, “tsuki mireba”: when I see the moon.
Fourth line, “shima zo kōri no”: zo is answered by the attributive keru; the moonlit sea seen as ice.
Fifth line, “taema narikeru”: "are its gaps," closing the zo construction.
- Author
- Saigyō
- Source
- Sankashu
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