Musashino ya yukedomo aki no hate zo naki ikanaru kaze ka sue ni fukuramu

English Translation

Musashi's wide moor
and I go, and there is no
end to the autumn
and what wind can it be that
blows at the far edge of it

Meaning

On the moor of Musashi I go on, and autumn has no end: what wind must be blowing out there at its farthest edge?

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 378

Headnote: from the time when he presented ten poems at Minase.
A poem about walking a moor without end. The headnote places it at Minase, where Retired Emperor Go-Toba had a detached palace, written of in his thirty-sixth poem in Book Two.
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. This is his second appearance in this book, after the three hundred and fifty-first poem.
The time is autumn; the place is the moor of Musashi, long written of for its vastness.
The occasion was the presentation of the ten poems.

The first line raises the place with an exclamatory particle.
The concessive particle in the second line carries the sense of walk as one may.
In the third line an emphatic particle governs a negative in the attributive form; the word before it means an end or a limit. That the moor does not end and that autumn does not end are laid over each other.
An interrogative particle in the fourth line governs the auxiliary at the close.
The word in the closing line means the far end, the destination. In the three hundred and seventy-third and seventy-seventh poems the same word meant the tips of plants; here it means the end of a space, and the scale is changed. Reasoning about wind in a place that cannot be seen is the pattern of Toshiyori's two hundred and sixty-sixth poem, which reasoned about distant rain.

Author

Minamoto no Michiteru

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other