Yūzukuhi sasu ya iori no shiba no to ni sabishiku mo aru ka higurashi no koe

English Translation

The evening sun's light
falls on the brushwood door of
the hut, and how lone
and desolate it all is
the evening cicada's cry

Meaning

The evening sun falls on the brushwood door of the hut, and how lonely it is, the crying of the evening cicadas.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 269

Headnote: for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The second poem on the evening cicada, on its voice reaching a hut in the last of the sun. The headnote assigns it to the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Tadayoshi; this is his third appearance in this book, after the two hundred and thirty-fourth and forty-first poems.
The time is a summer evening; the place is a hut in the hills.
The occasion was submission to the contest.

The first line names the sun of evening, the hour to which the sinking hills of the previous poem lead.
The verb in the second line means for sunlight to fall, and it also carries the sense of shutting a door, so that it pivots on the door below. Kunaikyo's hundred and seventy-third poem in Book Two uses the same play; the particle after it is exclamatory.
The third line names a rough door made of brushwood, the mark of a dwelling in the hills, of a piece with the door of pine in the third poem of Book One and the makeshift door of the two hundred and nineteenth.
The particle in the fourth line is exclamatory: how lonely it is. It is the form of Kiyosuke's two hundred and sixty-fourth poem, which said how cool it was; there the feeling is comfort and here desolation.
The poem closes with the same words as the one before, so that two pieces end alike and stand together. A sinking sun, a poor dwelling and a cicada's voice are laid together, and the loneliness of summer's end is given.

Author

Fujiwara no Tadayoshi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other