Tare o ka mo Matsuchi no yama no ominaeshi aki to chigireru hito zo aru rashi

English Translation

For whom is she then
the maiden-flower that stands
on Matsuchi hill
there must be someone with whom
she has made a pact for fall

Meaning

Whom is she waiting for, the maidenflower on Matsuchi hill? There must be one she promised to meet in autumn.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 336

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
A run on the maidenflower begins here. The flower is taken for a woman and said to be waiting for someone. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Ono no Komachi was an early Heian poet, counted among both the six and the thirty-six immortals of poetry. This is her second appearance in this book, after the three hundred and twelfth poem.
The time is autumn; the place is Matsuchi hill, on the border of Yamato and Kii.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The maidenflower's name made it natural to write of it as a woman, and it brought the manner of love poetry into the autumn poems.

An interrogative particle in the first line opens the poem with a question: whom?
The place name in the second line sounds the verb for waiting, so that the question of the first line is folded into the name: whom is she waiting for?
The third line names the flower.
The fourth line means having promised to meet in autumn; the verb is the one used in Shunzei's three hundred and fifth poem.
The auxiliary at the close expresses inference from evidence, and the evidence is the way the flower stands as if waiting. A flower is taken for a person and her circumstances reasoned out from her bearing, and the run that follows proceeds on that assumption.

Author

Ono no Komachi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other