Kurekakaru munashiki sora no aki o mite oboezu tamaru sode no tsuyu kana

English Translation

Looking at autumn
in an empty sky that goes
dark toward evening
before I know it, they stand
the drops of dew on my sleeve

Meaning

Looking at the autumn of an empty sky as it darkens, I find, without knowing how, the dew gathered on my sleeve.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 358

Headnote: topic unknown.
The second poem on the autumn evening: tears gather at the mere sight of an empty sky. The original gives no fresh attribution, which indicates the same poet as before.
The poet is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune, as in the previous poem.
The time is an autumn evening; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The first line means on the point of darkening, the phrase used in Kunaikyo's hundred and seventy-third poem in Book Two of a spring about to end.
The adjective in the second line means empty, with nothing in it. It is used of bare branches and an empty sky in the hundred and forty-seventh and forty-ninth poems of Book Two, after the flowers had gone; a word from that scene is applied here to an autumn sky.
The third line means: looking at the autumn shown in that sky. Nothing is being looked at but emptiness.
The fourth line means without noticing, so that the tears gather unattended.
The poem closes on a noun. Dew on a sleeve is a tear, as in the two hundred and ninety-fourth and three hundred and twelfth poems. Tears come although there is nothing to see, and as in the three hundred and fifty-fifth poem the subject is a feeling without a cause.

Author

Fujiwara no Yoshitsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other