身にとまる思ひをおきのうは葉にて
このころ悲し夕暮の空
このころ悲し夕暮の空
- Roma-ji
-
Mi ni tomaru omoi o oki no uwaha nite kono koro kanashi yūgure no sora
- English Translation
-
The thought that stays on
in me I have set aside
on the reed's top leaf
and in these days it is sad
the sky at the fall of dark
- Meaning
- The thought that will not leave me I have laid on the upper leaf of the reed; and in these days the evening sky is a sad thing.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 352
Headnote: topic unknown.
Three poems on the reed's upper leaves follow. In this first the poet lays his own feeling on the leaf. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
The poet, given as former Archbishop, is Jien, a son of the Regent Fujiwara no Tadamichi. He served four times as abbot of the Tendai school and wrote the historical work Gukansho. In Book One he is the poet of the thirty-third poem, in Book Two of the ninety-fifth, and in Book Three of the hundred and seventy-seventh and others. Tadamichi, poet of the three hundred and second piece, was his father.
The time is an autumn evening; the place is where reeds grow.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The first line means that it stays in the body: a feeling with no outlet remains inside.
The word in the second line does double duty, meaning to set a thing down and naming the reed. The sound carries from the one to the other, so that an inward feeling is transferred to a plant in view.
The word in the third line means the upper leaves, used in the three hundred and sixth and eleventh poems.
The fourth line means that in these days he is sad, and no reason is given: only the feeling is set down.
The poem closes on a noun. Having laid the thought on a plant, he is sad all the same, which is the tone of Sanesada's three hundred and fourth poem, where tears fell for no reason that could be named.
- Author
- Jien
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- On moor after moor it goes calling as it goes the wind of autumn and to a thing so fickle the plumed grass bends all the same
- 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
- Thinking on and on of what my own station is in the evening, and across the reeds' upper leaves a wind is passing, it seems
- In autumn I do nothing but brood, and even at the wind that blows over the reeds where the dew is clinging, it is the same