Hototogisu naku samidare ni ueshi ta o karigane samumi aki zo kurenuru

English Translation

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

Meaning

The paddies planted in the early summer rains, when the cuckoo sang, are now being reaped; the cries of the wild geese sound cold, and autumn is drawing to its end.

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 456

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the fourth poem of the sequence on autumn fields and the autumn chill. The fields planted in the early summer rains when the cuckoo sang are now being reaped, the cries of the wild geese sound cold, and autumn has come to its end. The headnote, continued from the preceding poem, gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author was an official and man of letters in the mid-Heian period. The family name, written "Yoshishige" in the text, is also written with other characters.
The scene is the late-autumn harvest, at fields that have reached harvest time.
The direct occasion is not recorded.

The first line, "hototogisu," is the cuckoo, the bird that announces summer; the autumn poem thus begins with a summer image.
In the second line, "samidare" are the long rains of the fifth lunar month, the season for planting rice.
In the third line, "shi" is the attributive of the past auxiliary "ki," looking back on the planting done in summer.
In the fourth line, "kari" is a pivot word: following the third line it means "reaping" the fields, and it also forms "karigane," the cry of the wild geese. "Samumi" means "because it is cold," so the harvest season and the cold cries of the geese are joined in one phrase.
In the last line, the emphatic "zo" is resolved by "nuru," the attributive of the perfective "nu." The poem holds the span from planting to harvest, marking the change of seasons through the contrast of two migrating birds, the summer cuckoo and the autumn geese. Poem 460 likewise contrasts "rice reaped and hung to dry" with "seedlings I planted," so poems viewing the same passage of time in the fields from different angles frame the sequence. The geese are taken up again in "the beating wings of the passing geese" in 458.

Author

Yoshishige no Tamemasa

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other