Shinkokinshu #422

When presenting a 50-poem sequence [on the topic] "Field, road, moon."

    At the journey's end,
the sky and a single field --
    in Musashino
from out of the plain of grass
the rising moonlight.

—12 July 2013

Original by Fujiwara no Yoshitsune. A small joke -- as this is something really completely different: the "next" poem, as in #422, but from the Shinkokinshu, the eighth imperial anthology, compiled almost exactly 300 years later than the Kokinshu. I peeked into it just for fun and found I actually could more or less read many of of them -- and translating poems that are imagistic rather than focused on tone and wordplay is an interesting exercise. So, too, statements without a main verb (a specific poetic effect). From the middle of Book IV, which as in the Kokinshu is the first autumn book. Next up, the real next #422.


yukusue wa
sora mo hitotsu no
musashino ni
kusa no hara yori
izuru tsukikage

---L.