Nezame suru nagatsuki no yo no toko samumi kesa fuku kaze ni shimo ya okuran

English Translation

Waking in the night
of the Long Month, and my bed
is so very cold—
on the wind that blows this dawn
has the frost begun to fall?

Meaning

Awake on a night of the Long Month, my bed is so cold—has frost settled with the wind that blows this morning?

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 519

Headnote: "At the Poetry Contest in 1,500 Rounds."
This is the fifth poem of the late-autumn sequence. Because the bed is so cold on a wakeful night of the Long Month, the speaker guesses that frost has settled with this morning's wind. According to the headnote, it was composed for the Poetry Contest in 1,500 Rounds.
The author was a son of Minister of the Left Tokudaiji Sanesada who later rose to Minister of the Left. The provisional master was a deputy head of the office serving the crown prince.
The scene is a night of the Ninth Month into dawn, in a bedchamber where the cold wakes the speaker.
The direct occasion was the Poetry Contest in 1,500 Rounds, completed around 1202.

The first line, "nezame suru," means waking in the night.
In the second line, "nagatsuki" is the Ninth Month, the last month of autumn. In 490 the month's name was punned with the long nights as the reason for waking; this poem too sings of waking on a night of the Long Month.
The third line, "toko samumi," is the "(o) ... mi" construction without "o": "because the bed is cold." It takes up the chill of the straw mat in 518.
The fourth line means "in the wind that blows this morning."
In the last line, the interrogative "ya" is bound to "ran," the attributive of the conjectural "ramu." From the cold of the bed, the speaker infers frost outside that cannot be seen. Following the frosty nights of 517 and 518, it imagines frost settled at dawn, marking the passage from late autumn toward winter.

Author

Fujiwara no Kintsugu

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other