Akikaze wa fukimusubedomo shiratsuyu no midarete okanu kusa no ha zo naki

English Translation

The wind of autumn
blows and makes the dew, and yet
there is not a blade
of grass anywhere on which
white dew does not lie scattered

Meaning

The autumn wind blows and gathers the dew; and there is no blade of grass on which the white dew does not lie scattered.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 310

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
A run on dew begins here. Taking as given that the autumn wind makes the dew form, the poem says that no leaf holds it evenly. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Daini no Sanmi was Fujiwara no Kataiko, daughter of Murasaki Shikibu. She served as wet nurse to Emperor Go-Reizei and was granted the junior third rank. In Book One she is the poet of the forty-ninth poem.
The time is autumn; the place is where grass grows.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The verb in the second line means to bring dew together. It is the idea of Tomochika's two hundred and ninety-fifth poem, where the first autumn wind went in search of dew, and a concessive particle follows.
The third line names the object.
The fourth line means lying in disorder. Since the wind is blowing, the dew cannot settle evenly.
An emphatic particle governs the negative in the attributive form at the close. The double negative amounts to a universal: there is no leaf on which it does not lie scattered, which is to say it lies so on all of them. A statement of totality is made by denial, and the reach of the wind is what it measures. It is the form of Saigyo's two hundred and ninety-ninth poem, which said that not even the untroubled were exempt.

Author

Daini no Sanmi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other