Toki shi mo are furusatobito wa oto mo sede miyama no tsuki ni akikaze zo fuku

English Translation

Of all times, just now
the people of the old home
send no word at all
and on the deep mountain's moon
the wind of autumn blows on

Meaning

Of all times, now: no word comes from the old home, and the autumn wind blows on the moon deep in the mountains.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 394

Headnote: composed on the theme of the autumn moon at a mountain house, for the contest of the third month of 1201.
The nineteenth poem on the moon. The topic is the autumn moon at a house in the hills, and the poem is about the ceasing of word from elsewhere. The original gives no fresh attribution.
The poet is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune, as in the previous poem.
The time is a night in autumn; the place is a house deep in the mountains.
The occasion was submission to the contest of the third month of 1201, from which the seventy-second poem of Book One and the two hundred and thirty-seventh of Book Three also come.

The first line means: of all the times there might have been, the phrase used in Tomochika's hundred and twenty-first poem in Book Two to voice a complaint.
The second line names the people of the old home, taking up the word from the previous poem, so that the two share it.
The word in the third line means news, a message, with a negative connective: no word comes at all.
The fourth line names the deep mountains, with an honorific prefix.
An emphatic particle governs the verb at the close. Word has ceased and only moon and wind remain, the subject of Teika's two hundred and thirty-second poem in Book Three, where the long rains cut off even messages: the severing of contact between people.

Author

Fujiwara no Yoshitsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other