Mado chikaki isasa muratake kaze fukeba aki ni odoroku natsu no yo no yume

English Translation

Close by my window
the little clump of bamboo
and when the wind blows
I wake and think it autumn
out of a summer night's dream

Meaning

When the wind blows through the small clump of bamboo by my window, I wake from a summer night's dream thinking that autumn has come.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 257

Headnote: when the company wrote on the theme of the coolness of a night wind in bamboo, at Toba.
The second poem on bamboo and coolness. Like the poem before it, it sets bamboo at a window, and the sound of the wind is mistaken for autumn. Toba was the site of Retired Emperor Shirakawa's palace and appears in the headnote to the eightieth poem of Book One.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Kintsugu (1175-1227), who served in the household of the crown prince and later rose to Inner Minister.
The time is a summer night; the place is a window at the Toba palace.
The occasion was the set topic.

The first line repeats the opening of the previous poem, so that two pieces begin alike and stand together.
The word in the second line means slight, a very little; it is an old form, and the phrase means a small stand within a growth of bamboo.
The third line gives a settled condition.
The verb in the fourth line means to start awake. Wind through bamboo belongs to autumn, and so the sleeper wakes in summer believing the season has changed. The mistaking of one season for another is the subject.
The poem closes on a noun. The previous poem had the wind shorten the dream; this one has it break the dream off. The same situation is handled as curtailment and as interruption.

Author

Fujiwara no Kintsugu

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other