"For many a year
The fire in me of love
Has not been quenched,
Yet my frozen sleeve [soaked with tears]
Is still unthawed."
"It is I alone
Who am most miserable,
For no year passes
In which even the 'Cow-herd'
Does not meet his love."
There is here an allusion to the Chinese story, according to which the Cow-herd, one of a group of stars near the River of Heaven (the Milky Way), is the lover of a star on the other side called the Spinster. They are separated all the year round except on the seventh day of the seventh month, when magpies bridge over the River of Heaven, so as to allow the pair to meet. Both Chinese and Japanese poetry contain numberless allusions to this legend.
The most convenient of the many editions of the Kokinshiu is Motoöri's Tō-Kagami. It contains a modern colloquial paraphrase of the original.
