Kumo mayou yūbe ni aki o komenagara kaze mo ho ni idenu ogi no ue kana

English Translation

Cloud is drifting now
and the evening holds within
itself the autumn
and the wind has not come out
in ear, above the reed beds

Meaning

Cloud drifts, and the evening holds autumn folded in it; and above the reeds the wind too has not yet come into the open.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 278

Headnote: composed as a summer poem.
The second poem on the reed, taking up the previous poem's phrase and writing of an autumn that has not yet shown itself. The headnote gives it as a summer poem.
The poet, given as former Archbishop, is Jien; this is his fifth appearance in this book, after the hundred and seventy-seventh and others.
The time is an evening at the end of summer; the place is where reeds grow thick.
The occasion was the composition of a summer poem.

The first line means that the cloud drifts without settling, as in Hachijoin no Takakura's two hundred and eighth poem.
The second line gives the hour and the subject.
The verb in the third line means to hold within, and the particle after it is concessive: the evening holds autumn inside and does not let it out.
The fourth line repeats the phrase of the previous poem; the particle carries the sense of the wind too. Neither the reed's ear nor the wind's autumn has come to the surface, and two kinds of not-yet are laid together.
The poem closes on a noun with an exclamatory particle. Where the previous poem had autumn speaking from below, this one has it still hidden. Two poems share a phrase and stand as a pair, one for what emerges and one for what does not.

Author

Jien

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other