Aki no ta ni io sasu shizu no toma o arami tsuki to tomo ni ya moriakasuramu

English Translation

Where he sets his hut
in the autumn field, the thatch
of the poor man's roof
is coarse, and with the moon he
must be keeping watch till dawn

Meaning

The thatch of the poor man's hut in the autumn field is coarsely woven: with the moon leaking through it, he must be keeping watch till dawn.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 431

Headnote: from a hundred-poem sequence called for in the reign of Retired Emperor Sutoku.
This poem closes the run on the hut in the fields, with its keeper sitting out the night in the company of the moon. The headnote refers to the Kyuan sequences of 1150, from which the four hundred and thirteenth poem also comes.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Akisuke, compiler of the Shika Wakashu and founder of the poetics of the Rokujo house. This is his second appearance in this book, after the four hundred and thirteenth poem.
The time is a night in autumn; the place is a hut in an autumn field.
The occasion was the presentation of the hundred-poem sequence.

The verb in the first two lines means to put up a hut.
The word in the second line means a person of low station, used in Sanesada's two hundred and nineteenth poem in Book Three.
The word in the third line names the sedge or reed matting laid as a roof, and the phrase after it, an adjective stem with a suffix, states a cause: because the weave is coarse.
An interrogative particle in the fourth line governs the auxiliary at the close.
The verb at the close is the one used in the four hundred and twenty-eighth poem, doing double duty for light leaking and for guarding a field, with a verb meaning to sit out the night. Three poems share the pivot, and of them this one reasons most closely, since the coarseness of the roof is given as the cause of the leaking.

Author

Fujiwara no Akisuke

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other