昆陽の池に生ふるあやめの長き根は
引く白糸の心地こそすれ
引く白糸の心地こそすれ
- Roma-ji
-
Koya no ike ni ouru ayame no nagaki ne wa hiku shiraito no kokochi koso sure
- English Translation
-
Growing in the pond
of Koya, the iris plants—
the long roots they bear
when drawn out seem to me
like threads of purest white.
- Meaning
- The long roots of the irises growing in Koya Pond, when pulled up, feel just like white threads being drawn out.
- Commentary
-
Book Two Summer Poems 63
This poem treats the iris roots used at the Tango Festival on the fifth day of the Fifth Month. The long white roots pulled from Koya Pond are likened to white thread being drawn out. At the festival people also competed over the length of iris roots, and the poem praises that length.
The sequence moves from the cuckoo to the iris, an emblem of the Fifth Month. It shares its final line with poem 61 and stands at the threshold of the run of early-summer rain poems that follows.
First line, "Koya Pond," is hypermetric and names a famous place in Settsu Province.
Second line presents the irises growing in the pond as the subject.
Third line focuses on the length of the iris roots.
Fourth line overlaps "pulling" roots with "drawing" thread. The theme of thread also echoes "summer-drawn thread" in poem 66.
Fifth line forms a koso and sure concord, the same phrase that closes poem 61.
- Author
- Taikenmon-in no Horikawa
- Source
- Shika Wakashu
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