難波潟漕げど小舟は葦わかのえざるほどこそ久しかりけり

naniwagata kogedo obune wa ashiwaka no ezaru hodo koso hisashikarikeri

Through Naniwa Inlet I row, yet my little boat The reed shoots Cannot navigate—the time Lasts forever![i]

1[ii]

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[i] This poem is an acrostic containing the hidden expression kanoesaru 庚申 (‘senior metal monkey’), which was the fifty-seventh in the Sinitic calendrical cycle. The Sino-Japanese reading of 庚申 is kōshin, and it was every sixty days when kanoesaru came up that kōshin was observed by Heian aristocrats (and others). Motozane cleverly works the reference into his poem, with the final line referring to how the time dragged when one had to stay up all night.

[ii] Motozane-shū (60) with the additional headnote (topic), ‘Kōshin’.