秋風のよそに吹きくる音羽山
何の草木かのどけかるべき
何の草木かのどけかるべき
- Roma-ji
-
Akikaze no yoso ni fukikuru Otowayama nani no kusaki ka nodokekarubeki
- English Translation
-
The autumn wind comes
blowing from elsewhere across
Otowa mountain
and what grass or tree of them
could keep its peace under it
- Meaning
- The autumn wind comes blowing from elsewhere over Otowa: what grass or tree there could stay quiet under it?
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 371
Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The reach of the autumn wind is given as covering every plant on the mountain. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Sone no Yoshitada was a mid-Heian poet; this is his third appearance in this book, after the three hundred and eleventh and forty-third poems.
The time is autumn; the place is Otowa in Yamashiro Province, east of the capital. Its name contains the word for sound, which suits poems of wind and voices.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The second line of the text does not agree with the phonetic line given beside it; the reading of the text itself is followed here.
The first line names the subject.
The word in the second line means somewhere one has nothing to do with, as in Masatsune's two hundred and ninety-eighth poem. The wind comes in from outside.
The third line fixes the place; the name holds the word for sound, and suits a poem about the wind.
An interrogative particle in the fourth line governs the attributive form at the close. It is near to a rhetorical question: which of them? None.
The adjective at the close means calm, quiet. The claim is universal, that not one can stay still, the form of Daini no Sanmi's three hundred and tenth poem and Chomei's three hundred and sixty-sixth, which likewise stated that there were no exceptions.
- Author
- Sone no Yoshitada
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
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Aki kureba tokiwa no yama no matsukaze mo utsuru bakari ni mi ni zo shimikeru
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Akatsuki no tsuyu wa namida mo todomarade uramuru kaze no koe zo nokoreru