Asajiwara nushi naki yado no niwa no omo ni aware ikuyo no tsuki wa sumikemu

浅茅原主なき宿の庭の面に
あはれ幾夜の月はすみけむ

Roma-ji: Asajiwara nushi naki yado no niwa no omo ni aware ikuyo no tsuki wa sumikemu
English Translation: A cogon wasteland,
in the garden of a house
that no master keeps—
ah, for how many nights
has the moon dwelt clear and bright?
Meaning: In the garden of this masterless house, gone to cogon grass—ah, for how many nights has the moon shone clear and dwelt there?
Commentary: Autumn Poems 275

Headnote: "Moon at a ruined house"
In the cogon-choked garden of a ruined house whose master is gone, the poet wonders for how many nights the moon alone has cast its clear light and dwelt there. Picturing the moon still shining on a house people have left as a dweller in their place, he deepens the pathos of the ruined dwelling.
This poem was included in the Shinchokusen Wakashū. The Ruijū text gives the headnote as "On the theme 'The moon at a ruined house'" and places the poem in the miscellaneous section. The Teika text and the Shinchokusenshū give the last line as tsuki ka sumikemu. In the source text consulted, a character in line 4 is missing, and it has been read as ikuyo no from the syllable count and the flow of the words.

Line 1, asajiwara, a field thick with low cogon grass, shows the ruin of the house; it is the same word as the opening of 252.
Line 2, "of a house without a master," presents the "ruined house" of the topic.
Line 3, "on the face of the garden," is hypermetric.
Line 4: aware is an interjection, "ah, how many nights." Like "for how many nights has it lain" in 261, it sings of nights piling up.
Line 5: sumi is a pivot word meaning both the moonlight "shining clear" and the moon "dwelling," concluded with the past conjectural kemu. In the preceding poem, 274, a person gazed alone at the moon through the years; here the moon alone has dwelt in a house no one lives in, pairing an inhabited dwelling with an abandoned one.
Author: Minamoto no Sanetomo
Source: Kinkaishu
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