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Kokinshu #316
Saturday, 13 October 2012 14:11 Topic unknown.
Because the shining
of the moon in the wide sky
was so very clear,
the waters where I had seen
its image are frozen first.
ôzora no
tsuki no hikari shi
kiyokereba
kage mishi mizu zo
mazu kôrikeru
---L.
Because the shining
of the moon in the wide sky
was so very clear,
the waters where I had seen
its image are frozen first.
—20 September 2012
Original author unknown. Picking up the freezing first previewed in #277. Semantic ambiguity: kage can, depending on context, mean "shadow," "reflection," or the "light" from a celestial object. That "saw" is inflected as a personal past experience, meaning it's the speaker and not the moon/light doing the seeing, reduces the possibilities but does not entirely resolve matters. I went with the most poetic/romantic option, though this somewhat obscures the argument that cold moonlight is cold. The waters are generally understood to be a pond, and the speaker is probably looking at it again the next morning.ôzora no
tsuki no hikari shi
kiyokereba
kage mishi mizu zo
mazu kôrikeru
---L.