Ōkata no aki no hate dani kanashiki ni kyō wa ikadeka kimi kurasuramu

English Translation

Even the plain end
of any autumn is sad
how then will you spend
this day of all days — how will
you live your way through today

Meaning

The end of an ordinary autumn is sad enough. How, then, are you getting through this day of all days?

Commentary

9 The End of Autumn

The Prince of Momozono, Minister of Military Affairs, had died, and the service marking the first anniversary was held at the end of the ninth month. Toshiko sent "Ōkata no aki no hate dani kanashiki ni kyō wa ikadeka kimi kurasuramu" to the prince's widow. It reached her as she sat weeping, wholly given over to her grief, and she answered with "Araba koso hajime mo hate mo omooeme kyō ni mo awade kienishi mono o". The section closes with the exchange.
Toshiko was the wife of Fujiwara no Chikane, a third-rank officer of the Right Horse Bureau, and appears repeatedly in this book as a poet: in the third section she is entrusted with the preparations for the retired emperor's celebration, and in the thirteenth her death is recorded. Of the Prince of Momozono the prose tells us only the place he lived and the office he held. The Lady of the North was his principal wife.
The setting is the day of the prince's first anniversary. The service fell at the end of the ninth month, exactly at the close of autumn.
What prompted the poem was the arrival of that day. It was sent to the prince's widow.
When it reached her, the prose says, she was weeping, wholly given over to her grief. She answered with a poem of her own, and the exchange closes the section.
This poem was later included in the Shokugosen-shū.

The end of an ordinary autumn is a season everyone finds bleak, and she puts that first.
The particle in the second line means even: that alone is sad — and today the anniversary falls on top of it. The poem is built in these two stages.
The closing line asks how the other woman is getting through her day, in the grammar used for supposing about what one cannot see, so that the question reaches towards someone at a distance.
Toshiko says nothing of her own sorrow, keeping entirely to that question. The end of the ninth month is taken up into the poem as the end of autumn, so that in a poem of condolence the seasonal word coincides exactly with the date of the occasion.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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