Akikaze no kokoro ya tsuraki hanasusuki fukikuru kata o mazu somukuramu

English Translation

Is it that the heart
of the autumn wind is hard
The pampas plumes turn
their backs, before anything
on the quarter it blows from

Meaning

Is the heart of the autumn wind so hard? The pampas plumes turn their backs, before anything else, on the quarter it blows from.

Commentary

130 The Pampas Plumes

This too is a poem by a woman living in Tsukushi. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
Of the poet the prose says only that she too was in Tsukushi. The hundred and twenty-ninth section likewise gives a poem by a woman there, and the two stand together.
The season is autumn, as the autumn wind and the pampas plumes show.
The prose records nothing of what prompted it.
The section ends with the poem; neither recipient nor response is given. The run of poems by women of Tsukushi, beginning in the hundred and twenty-sixth section, ends here.

The word for autumn in the first line also carries the sense of growing tired of someone, so that the season's wind and a man's weariness stand together.
The question asks whether that wind's heart is hard, granting the wind a heart in order to ask after it.
The pampas plumes are the flowering heads of the grass, long in poetry as what bends before the wind.
The closing says they turn their backs first of all on the quarter it comes from — nothing more than what the eye sees. But it is also a woman turning her face from a man who has tired of her. A wind's heart and a plant's motion are all the poem uses, and the grievance is delivered without being stated.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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