Yorare tsuru nomose no kusa no kagerohite suzushiku kumoru yūdachi no sora

English Translation

The grass of the moor
that had wilted through the day
stirs and shimmers now
and clouding over, cool, comes
the sky of a summer squall

Meaning

The grass that lay wilted over the whole moor is in shadow now, and the sky clouds cool with a coming squall.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 263

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
A run on summer squalls begins here. This poem gives the coolness of the moment just before the rain, when the sun goes in. The original gives neither a fresh headnote nor a fresh attribution.
The poet is the Monk Saigyo, as in the previous poem.
The time is a summer evening; the place is a moor thick with grass.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The verb in the first line means to droop, to wilt, and gives the grass laid low by the heat of the day.
The word in the second line means the whole extent of a moor.
The verb in the third line means for the sun to go behind something, and in one word tells us that cloud has covered it.
The fourth line gives the coolness that follows. To call a clouding over cool is to register a change of weather through the body.
The poem closes on a noun naming the sudden rain of a summer evening. The rain has not yet come, and it is the sky just before it that is given. Where the previous poem found coolness in clear water and shade, this one finds it in cloud, and the means of getting cool is changed.

Author

The Monk Saigyo

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other