Ato mo naki niwa no asaji ni musubōre tsuyu no soko naru matsumushi no koe

English Translation

In a trackless yard,
tangled in the sparse sedge grass,
bound up, pent within—
from the depths of the dewdrops
the pine cricket's waiting voice

Meaning

Tangled in the sedge grass of a garden where no footprints come, the voice of the pine cricket rises from the depths of the dew, as if waiting.

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 474

Headnote: "From a hundred-poem sequence."
This is the third and final poem of the insect sequence. From the depths of the dew caught in the sedge grass of a garden without footprints, the voice of the pine cricket is heard. According to the headnote, it comes from a hundred-poem sequence.
The author was a daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa who served as Kamo Priestess and studied poetry under Fujiwara no Shunzei.
The scene is autumn, in a garden overgrown with sedge grass where visitors no longer come.
The direct occasion was Retired Emperor Go-Toba's First Hundred-Poem Sequences of 1200.

The first line, "ato mo naki," means without even a footprint, showing a garden no one visits any longer.
In the second line, "asaji" is low sedge grass, a sign of a neglected garden. It takes up the dew poems on the quiet mugwort-grown garden of 467 and the sedge grass of 463 and 464.
The third line, "musubōre," joins the sense of dew forming into beads with that of a heart weighed down and unable to clear. In the dew knotted in the sedge is mirrored the heavy heart of one who waits for a visitor.
The fourth line means "deep within the dew," describing the insect's voice as if rising from the bottom of the dew.
The last line ends on a noun. "Matsu" joins the insect's name, the pine cricket, with "matsu," to wait for a visitor, so that the heart waiting in a garden without footprints for someone who does not come is entrusted to the insect's voice. It is linked by "pine" to "the wind in the pines" in 473, and by joining dew and insect in one poem it receives the passage from the dew sequence to the insect sequence while closing the latter.

Author

Princess Shokushi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other