Kono nenuru yo no ma ni aki wa kinikerashi asake no kaze no kinō ni mo ninu

English Translation

In the single night
I slept, it seems the autumn
has come after all
for the wind at daybreak here
is not what it was before

Meaning

In the one night I slept, autumn seems to have come: the wind at daybreak is not what it was yesterday.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 287

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, on the theme of early autumn.
The third poem on the autumn wind. The change of season within a single night is known from the wind at daybreak. The original gives no fresh headnote.
The poet, given by his court title, was a late Heian poet, known also for his accomplishment in music.
The time is daybreak at the beginning of autumn; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The first two lines mean: within this one night of sleeping. The season has changed while the poet slept, which is close to the unnoticed change of the previous poem.
The auxiliary in the third line is a contraction expressing inference from evidence, the form used in the hundred and seventy-fifth poem that opens Book Three and in the hundred and ninety-sixth and two hundred and sixty-sixth. The evidence follows below.
The word in the fourth line means the first light of morning.
The closing line means that it is not like yesterday's. Today's wind is measured against a remembered wind, and the judgement rests on nothing visible. Where the two poems before took the state of leaves for their sign, this one takes the difference in the wind itself, felt on the skin.

Author

Fujiwara no Suemichi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other