Oyamada ni hiku shimenawa no uchihaete kuchi ya shinuramu samidare no koro

English Translation

On the small hill fields
the rope they have drawn along
stretches out and out
and is it rotting away
in the season of long rain

Meaning

The rope drawn across the little hill fields runs on and on: has it rotted through in this season of long rain?

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 226

Headnote: for a screen painting of the fifth-month rains, at the time of the ninetieth-birthday celebration for Shakua.
The second poem on the fields. Taking up the rope of the previous poem, it asks whether the long rains have rotted it. Shakua of the headnote is the religious name of Fujiwara no Shunzei; the opening poem of Book Two comes from the same celebration.
The poet, given as Regent and Chancellor, is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune; this is his third appearance in this book, after the two hundred and ninth and two hundred and twentieth poems.
The time is the season of long rains; the place is small fields among the hills.
The occasion was the screen poem for that celebration.

The prefix in the first line is rhythmic; the phrase means fields among the hills.
The second line repeats the words of the previous poem, so that two pieces on one object stand together.
The third line means running on at length. It describes both a rope drawn far across the ground and rain that goes on falling, and it belongs with the rope as an associated word.
In the fourth line an interrogative particle stands with an auxiliary of present conjecture. Nothing is seen; the rotting is reasoned out from the length of the rain.
The poem closes on a noun naming the long rains of the fifth month. A rope set by human hands is undone by weather. The previous poem gave a small failure, a leaking pipe; this one follows it through to the rope's decay.

Author

Fujiwara no Yoshitsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other