Wasuru na yo tanomu no sawa o tatsu kari mo inaba no kaze no aki no yūgure

English Translation

Do not forget us
geese rising from the marshes
beside the rice fields
nor the wind in the rice leaves
nor the evenings of autumn

Meaning

Do not forget, you geese rising from the marsh by the rice fields: the wind in the rice leaves, the evenings of autumn.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 61

Headnote: on returning geese.
The fourth poem in the run on returning geese calls after the departing birds and bids them come back in autumn. The headnote gives returning geese as the topic.
The poet, given as Regent and Chancellor, is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune; this is his third appearance in the book, after the first and twenty-third poems.
The time is spring, at a marsh beside rice fields from which the geese are rising; but the poem's second half turns to an autumn evening.
The occasion was the set topic of returning geese.

The first line joins a prohibitive particle to a vocative one. It is the same phrasing Princess Shokushi used to the plum in the fifty-second poem, turned here upon the geese.
The word in the second line is the one Jakuren used in the fifty-eighth, and the two poems answer each other.
The third line names the birds; the particle carries the sense of the geese too.
The poem closes on nouns, and although it is a spring poem, the close belongs to autumn. The rice leaves are those of the ripening crop, so that the season of the birds' return is put before us in advance.
Departing birds are reminded of the place they will come back to, and two seasons stand in one poem. The word for the rice fields, running on from the fifty-eighth, is what joins the leaving to the returning.

Author

Fujiwara no Yoshitsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other