片敷きの袖こそ霜に結びけれ
待つ夜更けぬる宇治の橋姫
待つ夜更けぬる宇治の橋姫
- Roma-ji
-
Katashiki no sode koso shimo ni musubikere matsu yo fukenuru uji no hashihime
- English Translation
-
On her sleeve spread out
for sleeping alone, the frost
has hardened to ice—
the night grows late as she waits,
the Maiden of Uji Bridge.
- Meaning
- Frost has frozen on the single sleeve she spreads to sleep alone—waiting as the night grows late, the Maiden of Uji Bridge.
- Commentary
-
Winter Poems 332
Headnote: "A winter night"
This poem was composed on the theme of a winter night. As the night wears on in waiting for one who does not come, frost freezes on the single sleeve that the Maiden of Uji Bridge spreads to sleep alone. Against the legend of the Bridge Maiden, the poet layers the loneliness of a waiting woman with the chill of a winter night.
The poem takes as its source an anonymous Kokin Wakashū poem in which the speaker wonders whether the Bridge Maiden of Uji is waiting for him tonight too, spreading her robe alone on a straw mat. The Maiden, sung there by the one awaited, is here moved into a frosty winter night.
Line 1, katashiki, is spreading only one sleeve of one's robe to sleep alone. The next poem opens with the same "single-spread sleeve."
Line 2: koso is a binding particle concluded in line 3.
Line 3 concludes koso with kere, the evaluative form of keri, and the poem pauses here. It says the frost has frozen on the sleeve.
Line 4 means "the night has grown late as she waits."
Line 5 ends on a noun, revealing last by inversion the one who waits with her sleeve frozen by frost.
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
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Yo o samumi kawase ni ukabu mizu no awa no kieaenu hodo ni kōri shinikeri
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Katashiki no sode mo kōrinu fuyu no yo no ame furisusamu akatsuki no sora