Akenu tote nobe yori yama ni iru shika no ato fukiokuru hagi no shitakaze

English Translation

Day has come, and so
from the moor into the hills
the deer goes, and blows
after him, behind his track
the low wind through the clover

Meaning

Day has broken, and the deer goes up from the moor into the hills; and after him, along his track, blows the low wind through the clover.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 351

Headnote: on the theme of grasses and flowers in the morning, for a contest at the Bureau of Poetry.
The topic is the plants of the morning, and the poem gives a deer returning to the hills at daybreak with the wind blowing after it.
The poet, given by his court title, is Minamoto no Michiteru, a son of the Inner Minister Minamoto no Michichika, who later rose to Chancellor. In Book One he is the poet of the twenty-fifth poem and in Book Three of the two hundred and fifty-ninth. Minamoto no Michitomo, poet of the two hundred and ninety-fourth and others, was his elder brother.
The time is daybreak in autumn; the place is a moor where clover grows.
The occasion was submission to the contest.

The first line means: saying that the day has come. A quotative particle makes the deer seem to have judged so.
The second line moves from the moor to the hills. The deer was said to come out to the moor by night and return to the hills in the morning; Yakamochi's three hundred and thirty-fourth poem gives the going out, and this one the going back.
The third line names the animal.
The fourth line means blowing after it once it has gone, so that the wind is made to see the deer off.
The poem closes on a noun. The low wind named there is the wind that blows beneath trees and grasses, used in the Mother of Prince Yasusuke's hundred and eighteenth poem in Book Two. Pairing deer with clover, as in the three hundred and twenty-eighth and thirty-fourth poems, recurs through this book.

Author

Minamoto no Michiteru

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other