Tachiyoramu ko no moto mo naki tsuta no mi wa tokiwa nagara ni aki zo kanashiki

English Translation

This body of ivy
with no tree at whose foot it
might lean and take hold
stays green the whole year, and so
the autumn is sorrowful

Meaning

This ivy body of mine, with no tree at whose foot it might lean, stays green all year — and so the autumn is a sorrow to it.

Commentary

33 The Body of the Ivy

Ōshikōchi no Mitsune composed this poem and presented it to the Teiji retired emperor. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
Ōshikōchi no Mitsune was one of the compilers of the Kokin-shū and is counted among the thirty-six poetic immortals. The Teiji retired emperor is Emperor Uda, who appears in the first and second sections and in the thirty-second.
The setting is the retired emperor's residence. The autumn in the poem tells us the season.
The prose records nothing of what prompted it. It follows the thirty-second section, in which Minamoto no Muneyuki petitions for promotion, and is placed as another poem about the poet's own standing.
The section ends with the poem; no response and no later event is recorded.

The tree at whose foot the ivy might lean is what the poem lacks. Ivy climbs by holding to a tree, and without one it cannot stand at all; the figure carries a man with no patron.
The word for ivy also carries the sound of the word for clumsy or poor, so that he names himself a slight thing.
To stay evergreen is to keep the same colour while everything else turns. Behind this stands the fact that a rise in rank meant a change in the colour of one's robe.
The closing line, with an emphatic particle governing its adjective, says that autumn is the sorrow. It is a sorrow because everything else changes colour and he does not — the absence of promotion stated as a failure to turn.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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