From among the poems for the Fifteenth Night[i] (when I was thirty-four[ii]) and had heard that His Late Lordship[iii] was holding an entertainment.[iv]
いにしへの秋の空まですみだ川月にこととふ袖の露かな
| inishie no aki no sora made sumidagawa tsuki ni koto tou sode no tsuyu kana | In bygone days All the way to the autumn skies was Clear above the Sumida River, I would ask the moon with The dewdrops on my sleeves![v] |
[i] Jūgoya 十五夜: typically this referred to the night of the 15th day of the Eighth Month, when the moon was believed to be at its fullest and most beautiful.
[ii] The Japanese text in the original is ambiguous here and this is only one of several interpretations which have been offered for it. The most likely other one is that this is a simple miscopying of an entirely different phrase ‘when I presented three poems’.
[iii] A reference to Fujiwara (Kujō) no Yoshitsune 藤原(九条)良経 (1169-1206).
[iv] In this case, a poetry meet.
[v] An allusive variation on: When they arrived at the banks of the Sumida River, between the provinces of Musashi and Shimotsūsa, they thought fondly of the capital and, dismounting for a while on the river bank, they thought sadly about how far they had come. While they were gazing into space, the ferryman said, “Get on the boat quickly! The sun is going down.” So, they boarded and were about to set off, each one thinking miserably about someone he had left in the capital, when they saw a white bird with a red bill and legs splashing about in the river shallows. As it was a bird never seen in the capital, none of them could say what it was, so they asked the ferryman, and he replied that it was a miyakodori (capital bird); hearing this, Narihira composed the following: 名にしおはばいざ事とはむ宮こどりわが思ふ人はありやなしやと na ni shi owaba / iza koto towamu / miyakodori / wa ga omou hito wa / ari ya nashi ya to ‘If your name fits you, / There’s something I would ask, / O, Capital bird: / Is the lady in my thoughts / Still quite safe?’ Ariwara no Narihira (Kokinshū IX: 411)