Poem Meaning and Background
ありあけの・つれなくみえし・わかれより
ariake no・tsurenaku mieshi・wakare yori
あかつきばかり・うきものはなし
akatsuki bakari・uki mono wa nashi
〜壬生忠岑 (Mibu no Tadamine)
Translation
Like the morning moon,
Cold, unpitying was my love.
And since we parted,
I dislike nothing so much
As the breaking light of day.
Meaning
In the Kokin Wakashū (an imperial poetry anthology), this poem was included in a section labelled "Poems on returning home without meeting". This poem is interpreted as being about a man whose lover has rejected him, so we can imagine that though he went to see his lover, she refused to meet, hence he is returning home at early dawn, and when he sees the moon and compares it to the coldness of his lover. When he says he hates the "breaking light of day", it might be because this is when he sees the same cold moon that reminds him of the woman who broke his heart. It can also be taken to mean that since in the Heian Period, daybreak was usually when the men would have to leave their lovers to go home, daybreak now reminds the poet of parting lovers, so he dislikes it.
Ariake no tsuki refers to the time during the lunar cycle when the moon remains in the sky until dawn. Tsurenaku means the same as そっけなく(sokkenaku; cold, unpitying). The shi in mie-shi makes the phrase past-tense, so basically the phrase means "[the moon] looked/seemed cold and unpitying". Of course, here the moon can also be interpreted as a metaphor for his lover.
Akatsuki is a time of day, specifically the time after about 3AM and before the sun rises, when the sky is still quite dark. The word bakari here has the same meaning as ほど（hodo; as much as~). The last line, uki mono wa nashi has roughly the same meaning as 辛いことはない（tsurai koto wa nai). Therefore the last lines put together mean, "There is nothing as painful to me as these dark hours before sunrise", which is slightly different from the English translation given above.
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