classic waka stream

The keeper of the
ridgepole of that flat little
house must be in a
great uproar now that the brace
he counted on has fallen

Meaning
The keeper of the ridgepole of that flat little house must be in an uproar, now that the brace he counted on has fallen away.
Commentary
Volume Five: The Gosechi Dances

　The great Taira army encamped at the Fuji River mistook, in the middle of the night, the beating wings of waterfowl rising all at once from the marsh for a Minamoto night attack. Without fighting once they fled, each ahead of the other.
　When the Minamoto came up, the camp was empty. Scouts brought back armor the enemy had forgotten and the great curtains they had left behind, and reported that not a fly was left flying in the camp. Yoritomo dismounted at once, took off his helmet, washed his hands and rinsed his mouth, bowed toward the capital, and said that this was in no way his own doing but wholly the work of the Great Bodhisattva Hachiman.
　Some urged pressing the pursuit, but with his own rear not yet secure Yoritomo withdrew from Suruga to Kamakura.
　The women of the post stations along the Tōkaidō made a joke of the whole business. To flee after taking a look at the fighting is the mark of a coward, they said, and these Taira gentlemen fled after taking a listen—and they clapped their hands and laughed. With that came a run of lampoons. This is the first.

　It is built on three puns. Hiraya is a flat-roofed house and also the Taira; munemori is the keeper of a roof ridge and also Munemori; suke is the prop that keeps a house from falling and also gonnosuke, Koremori's title.
　The facts—that the commander in the capital was Munemori and the general sent out was the Provisional Assistant Captain Koremori—are transposed directly into the parts of a building. The venom of the lampoon lies in rendering a house that had produced a chancellor and an empress as a single shabby cottage. Only the vocabulary of one small house is used: ridge and prop, nothing more.
　Lampoons first appear in the Tale of the Heike in Volume Four, aimed at the monks of Mount Hiei. Here they are turned on the Taira themselves, with the family's own names worked into the puns. Half a year after the risings began, the anonymous voice reaches directly over their heads.

hiraya……a flat-roofed house; puns on Heike, the Taira.
munemori……the keeper of a roof ridge; puns on the name Munemori.
ikani……how greatly.
sawaguran……must be in an uproar.
hashira to tanomu……the pillar one relies on.
suke……a supporting prop; puns on gonnosuke.
gonnosuke……Koremori's title, Provisional Assistant Captain.
minige……fleeing after seeing how the fighting goes.
rakusho……an anonymous lampoon.
Source
Heike Monogatari
Other