Iwai kumu atari no ozasa tama koete katsugatsu musubu aki no yūtsuyu

English Translation

Drawing from the rock
spring, over the dwarf bamboo
the jewels spill, and
here and there it is forming
the evening dew of autumn

Meaning

By the rock spring where the water is drawn, the beads roll across the dwarf bamboo, and little by little the evening dew of autumn is forming.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 280

Headnote: for a screen at the entry of an imperial consort in 1190.
The second poem on the end of summer. Autumn dew is beginning to form on the bamboo grass beside a spring among rocks. The headnote assigns it to a screen made for the occasion; the seven hundred and nineteenth poem in Book Seven belongs to the same screen.
The poet, given by his titles as a lay monk, is Fujiwara no Kanezane, who served as Regent and Chancellor and left the diary Gyokuyo. This is his second appearance in this book, after the two hundred and thirty-first poem.
The time is an evening at the end of summer; the place is beside a rock spring.
The occasion was the screen.

The first line names a spring welling among rocks, of a kind with the mountain spring of Jien's two hundred and fifty-eighth poem.
The second line names dwarf bamboo, with a rhythmic prefix, the word used in Sanesada's two hundred and nineteenth poem.
The third line has the beads of dew rolling from leaf to leaf. Dew as jewels is the figure of the two hundred and seventy-fifth poem.
The word in the fourth line means little by little, barely. The verb means dew forming; in the two hundred and fifty-eighth poem it meant cupping water in the hands, and the same word does different work.
The poem closes on a noun. It is still summer, and calling the dew autumn's shows the season already turning. The pattern of finding autumn in hidden places, running since the two hundred and seventy-third poem, is transferred here to dew.

Author

Fujiwara no Kanezane

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other