Akihagi o irodoru kaze no fukinureba hito no kokoro mo utagawarekeri

English Translation

The wind that colours
the autumn bush clover has
blown — and with it comes
a doubt I did not look for
about a person's heart too

Meaning

The wind that colours the autumn bush clover has blown; and with it comes a doubt about a person's heart.

Commentary

160 The Purification Wand

While Captain Ariwara — that is, Ariwara no Narihira — was visiting the same Handmaid of Somedono, she sent him "Akihagi o irodoru kaze no fukinureba hito no kokoro mo utagawarekeri", and he answered "Aki no no o irodoru kaze wa fukinu tomo kokoro wa kareji kusaba naraneba". Later, when he had stopped coming, a robe was sent from him with word that he had no one even to wash it for him and would be grateful for her help; so she said that this was surely his own doing, and sent "Ōnusa ni narinuru hito no kanashiki wa yoruse to mo naku shika zo nakunaru". His reply was "Nagaru tomo nani to ka miemu te ni torite hikikemu hito zo nusa to shiruramu". That is the whole of the section.
Captain Ariwara is Ariwara no Narihira, counted among the six poetic geniuses; his son Ariwara no Shigeharu appears in the hundred and forty-third and hundred and forty-fourth sections. The Handmaid of Somedono appears in the hundred and fifty-ninth. The great purification wand was a large staff of paper streamers, touched by many hands in the rite and then set adrift on a river.
The setting is the period of his visits. The autumn bush clover tells us the season.
The prose records nothing further of what prompted it, saying only that she sent it to him.
He answered, and the section goes on to the exchange after his visits ceased. This poem was later included in the Gosen-shū.

The wind that colours the bush clover is the autumn wind, and the word for autumn also carries the sense of growing tired of someone, so that the season and his weariness stand together.
The grammar marks the wind's blowing as the cause: a plain fact of nature, that colour changes when the wind comes.
What follows is the doubt about his heart, in the spontaneous voice — she does not set out to doubt, and finds herself doubting.
As the colour of plants changes, so, she suggests, may a heart. The change of colour is transferred to a person, and the anxiety is stated without a word of accusation.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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