秋来れば朝明の風の手を寒み
山田の引板をまかせてぞ聞く
山田の引板をまかせてぞ聞く
- Roma-ji
-
Aki kureba asake no kaze no te o samumi yamada no hita o makasete zo kiku
- English Translation
-
When autumn arrives
the dawn wind at break of day
chills my hands so much
I leave the field's clappers to
the wind, and just listen there
- Meaning
- Once autumn comes, the dawn wind makes my hands so cold that I leave the clappers in the mountain paddy to the wind and simply listen to them.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 455
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the third poem of the sequence on autumn fields and the autumn chill. Because the dawn wind chills the hands, the speaker does not pull the clappers of the mountain paddy but lets the wind sound them and listens. The headnote, continued from the preceding poem, gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author was a scholar and poet of the late Heian period who served three emperors—Go-Sanjō, Shirakawa, and Horikawa—and rose to Senior Second Rank and Provisional Middle Counselor.
The scene is an autumn dawn, at a mountain paddy strung with clappers.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
The first line, "aki kureba," is the realis form with "ba," meaning "when autumn comes."
In the second line, "asake" is the time around daybreak.
The third line uses the "o ... mi" construction to mean "because my hands are cold." It shifts from the cold sleeves of 454 to cold hands.
In the fourth line, "hita" are clappers: boards hung on ropes stretched across the field, which rattle when the rope is pulled to scare off birds and beasts.
The last line means leaving the pulling of the clappers to the wind and listening to them sound; the emphatic "zo" is resolved by the attributive "kiku." There is a rustic wit rooted in the field-guard's life: too cold to use his hands, he lets the wind rattle the clappers. In 448 the guard himself startled the deer away; here the task of driving them off is entrusted to the wind, a contrasting picture of the same work.
- Author
- Oe no Masafusa
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Why, of all the sleeves, are those of the hut-keeper so drenched and limp now? Is it only on rice leaves that the autumn wind will blow?
- Guarding autumn fields, I have built a makeshift hut and here I stay on— how cold my sleeves have become, for the dew has settled there
- Planted in the rains when the cuckoo's song was heard, the fields now are reaped; the wild geese cry cold above, and the autumn has grown late
- From now on, surely, the autumn wind will blow cold— so it's bound to be; how then shall I sleep alone through the long nights that remain?