Aki wa tada mono o koso omoe tsuyu kakaru ogi no ue fuku kaze ni tsukete mo

English Translation

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

Meaning

In autumn I do nothing but brood, at everything, even at the wind that blows over the dew-hung reeds.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 354

Headnote: when she wrote an autumn poem.
The third poem on the reed's upper leaves. Taking up the two before it, it declares outright that autumn is nothing but brooding. The headnote gives autumn as the occasion.
The poet was a daughter of Minamoto no Shigeyuki; her dates are not recorded. Shigeyuki, poet of the twenty-eighth piece in Book One and the hundred and nineteenth in Book Two, was her father.
The time is autumn; the place is where reeds grow.
The occasion was the writing of an autumn poem.

The first line means: autumn is nothing but. Echizen's two hundred and ninety-seventh poem opens the same way, and the two both set out to define the season.
In the second line an emphatic particle governs a concessive form, so that the statement is flat: there is nothing but brooding.
The third line means with the dew clinging to them.
The fourth line fixes the place. The upper leaves of the reed are named as in the two poems before, and three pieces share the words.
The phrase at the close means with regard to that as well: everything seen or heard comes back to brooding. It states from the sufferer's own side the tie between the autumn wind and brooding that Saigyo's two hundred and ninety-ninth poem put in general terms.

Author

The Daughter of Minamoto no Shigeyuki

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other