Okuyama ni kokoro o irete tazunezu wa fukaki momiji no iro o mimashi ya

English Translation

Had I not gone in
to the deep hills with my whole
heart set on the search
would I ever have seen it —
the deep colour of those leaves

Meaning

If I had not gone into the deep hills with my whole heart set on the search, would I ever have seen the deep colour of those autumn leaves?

Commentary

47 The Deep Autumn Leaves

The Lady of Ichijō composed this poem. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
A woman of the same name appears in the thirty-eighth section, where she is the daughter of the fifth son of the previous emperor, serves the Kyōgoku Lady of the Bedchamber, and leaves the capital as the wife of the Governor of Iki. The prose here says nothing about any connection between them.
Neither time nor place is given. The autumn leaves in the poem tell us the season.
The prose records nothing of what prompted it. The section is one of the shortest in the book, a single poem and nothing else.
It ends there; no response and no later event is recorded.

The opening means: unless one goes into the deep hills with one's heart in the search. The phrase for putting one's heart in it means to apply oneself wholly, single-mindedly.
The grammar is that of a condition contrary to fact: had she not gone.
The word for deep in the fourth line is the depth of the colour and also the depth of the hills, answering the first line.
The closing question is rhetorical: could she have seen it? She could not. What is worth seeing is had only by those who take the trouble. Cast as a poem about autumn leaves, it reads equally as a general statement about what effort alone will yield.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other