Aware mata ika ni shinobamu sode no tsuyu nohara no kaze ni aki wa kinikeri

English Translation

How am I to bear
the thought of it again, the
dew upon my sleeve
and in the wind off the moor
the autumn has come to me

Meaning

How am I to think of it all again? The dew on my sleeve. In the wind across the moor, autumn has come.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 294

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The second poem on dew. Where the previous poem took the dew of a village, this one takes the dew on a sleeve, that is, tears. The original gives no fresh headnote.
The poet, given by his court title, is Minamoto no Michitomo, a son of the Inner Minister Minamoto no Michichika and one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu. In Book One he is the poet of the forty-sixth poem, in Book Two of the ninety-sixth, and in Book Three of the two hundred and thirty-ninth.
The time is the beginning of autumn; the place is an open moor.
The occasion was submission to the contest.

The exclamation opening the poem functions as an interjection, as in the hundred and forty-first and hundred and fifty-fifth poems of Book Two; the adverb after it means from now on, once again.
The verb in the second line means to think of with longing. Autumn's arrival is expected to bring more brooding with it.
The third line ends on a noun and comes to a stop. The dew named there is the tear on a sleeve. In the previous poem the dew lay on grass; here it lies on a person, and the two poems put one word to different objects.
The fourth line gives the setting.
The poem closes with the same words for a fifth time in this book. The repeated announcement of autumn binds the run together.

Author

Minamoto no Michitomo

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other