笹の葉のみ山もそよに霰降り
寒き霜夜を独りかも寝む
寒き霜夜を独りかも寝む
- Roma-ji
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Sasa no ha no miyama mo soyo ni arare furi samuki shimoyo o hitori ka mo nemu
- English Translation
-
On the bamboo leaves,
till the whole mountain rustles,
the hail comes falling;
on this cold and frosty night
must I sleep all alone?
- Meaning
- Hail falls on the bamboo leaves until the whole mountain rustles with it—must I sleep alone through this cold and frosty night?
- Commentary
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Winter Poems 349
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Hail"
Hail falls until the bamboo leaves rustle across the whole mountain, and the poet wonders whether he must sleep alone through this cold, frosty night. He layers the loneliness of sleeping alone with a mountain night filled with the sound of hail.
The poem draws on the phrasing of the Man'yōshū poem by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro in which, though the bamboo leaves rustle across the mountain, he thinks of his wife whom he has left behind. Kamo no Mabuchi marked it with a circle. A note in the Ruijū text and the Teika text give line 1 as sasa no ha wa.
Line 1 is the bamboo grass covering the mountain. The next poem opens with the same "bamboo leaves."
Line 2 means "till the whole mountain rustles," drawing on miyama mo saya ni in Hitomaro's poem.
Line 3 means "the hail falls."
Line 4 means "through the cold frosty night."
Line 5: ka is an interrogative binding particle and mo is emphatic, concluded with mu, the attributive of the conjectural.
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
- Prev Poem
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Mononofu no yanami tsukurou kote no ue ni arare tabashiru nasu no shinohara
- Next Poem
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Sasa no ha ni arare sayagite miyamabe no mine no kogarashi shikirite fukinu