Sabishisa wa miyama no aki no asagumori kiri ni shioruru maki no shitatsuyu

English Translation

Loneliness—it is
autumn in the deep mountains,
a clouded morning,
dew dripping from the cedars
drooping, soaked within the mist

Meaning

Loneliness is this: a clouded autumn morning in the deep mountains, the dew dripping beneath the cedars, drooping in the mist.

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 492

Headnote: "As an autumn poem."
This is the second poem of the mist sequence. The height of loneliness is shown as the dew dripping beneath cedars drooping in mist on a clouded autumn morning in the deep mountains. According to the headnote, it was composed as an autumn poem.
The author was a son of Emperor Takakura who ruled as retired emperor after abdicating, established the Poetry Office, and ordered the compilation of the Shinkokinshū. Defeated in the Jōkyū War, he was exiled to the Oki Islands.
The scene is a misty autumn morning, in deep mountains thick with cedars.
The direct occasion was the composition of an autumn poem, though the headnote records neither setting nor year.

In the first line, "wa" sets up "loneliness" as the topic, which the rest of the poem makes concrete. It opens with the same words as Book Four's poem 361, "Loneliness—it is not in any single color."
The second line means "of autumn in the deep mountains."
The third line, "asagumori," is a clouded morning, dim with mist. Whereas 491 sang of autumn dusk, this poem sings of morning. There is a pause here.
In the fourth line, "shioruru" is the attributive of "shioru," to droop, soaked by the mist.
The last line ends on a noun: dew dripping from the branches of cedars. Loneliness itself is distilled into a single image, dew beneath mist-soaked cedars. Sharing "cedars" with 491, it pairs that poem's dynamic scene of mist rising at dusk with this still scene of drooping leaves and dripping dew on a clouded morning. Where Book Four's 361 said loneliness lies in no particular color and pointed to a cedar mountain at dusk, this poem finds loneliness in the dew beneath cedars on a morning in the deep mountains, answering the same "loneliness is ..." with a different hour and scene.

Author

Go-Toba In

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other