紅葉葉の色にまかせて常磐木も
風にうつろふ秋の山かな
風にうつろふ秋の山かな
- Roma-ji
-
Momijiba no iro ni makasete tokiwagi mo kaze ni utsurou aki no yama kana
- English Translation
-
Giving way to hues
of the crimson autumn leaves,
even evergreens
seem to change upon the wind—
such is the autumn mountain
- Meaning
- Yielding to the colors of the autumn leaves, even the evergreens seem to change in the wind—such is the mountain in autumn.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 536
Headnote: "Composed for the fifty-poem sequences of Cloistered Prince Shukaku."
This is the fourteenth poem of the autumn-leaves sequence. Yielding to the colors of the autumn leaves, even the evergreens seem to change hue in the wind on the autumn mountain. According to the headnote, it is from the fifty-poem sequences for Cloistered Prince Shukaku.
The author was a son of Minister of the Left Tokudaiji Sanesada who later rose to Minister of the Left. The Master of the Crown Prince's Household headed the office serving the crown prince.
The scene is autumn as the leaves scatter, on a mountain where evergreens and reddening trees grow together.
The direct occasion was the fifty-poem sequences that Cloistered Prince Shukaku, a son of Emperor Go-Shirakawa and abbot of Ninnaji, commissioned from poets.
The first line, "momijiba no," means "of the autumn leaves," the color dyeing the mountain.
The second line, "iro ni makasete," means yielding to the power of the leaves' color, as even the evergreens follow it.
In the third line, "tokiwagi" are evergreens such as pine and cedar that never change color, and "mo" implies "even the evergreens, not only the reddening trees."
The fourth line, "kaze ni utsurou," means seeming to change color in the wind, as scattering red leaves cover and dye the evergreens.
In the last line, "kana" is exclamatory. Through the conceit that even evergreens, which never change, appear colored by red leaves scattering onto them in the wind, the poem shows the entire mountain dyed with autumn. Where 527 argued from the pine that stays green in the showers that trees must redden of their own will, this poem has even the evergreens shifting into autumn color, reversing the two poems' treatment of trees that do not change.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Kintsugu
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Leaves of the kiri have grown so deep I can scarce push my way through them— though it is not that I wait for someone to come to me
- No one comes to me; on the wind the leaves have all scattered and are gone; night after night the insects' voices grow weaker, I hear
- Dew and showers leak through Moruyama's shade on low leaves blazing red— though I be drenched, I'll break some as a keepsake of autumn
- The creeping vines that climb along the pine trees have shed their leaves and gone; in the autumn of near hills must the wind be raging now?