散りかかる紅葉の色は深けれど
渡れば濁る山川の水
渡れば濁る山川の水
- Roma-ji
-
Chirikakaru momiji no iro wa fukakeredo watareba nigoru yamakawa no mizu
- English Translation
-
The scattering leaves
of crimson have a hue that
runs so deep, and yet
cross it, and the water clouds,
the stream flowing through the hills
- Meaning
- The color of the scattering autumn leaves is deep, yet when one crosses, the mountain stream turns cloudy.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 540
Headnote: "When I presented a hundred-poem sequence."
This is the eighteenth poem of the autumn-leaves sequence. The color of the leaves scattering onto the mountain stream is deep, yet if one crosses, the water turns cloudy. According to the headnote, it was composed as part of a hundred-poem sequence.
The author was a daughter of Minamoto no Yorimasa and a lady-in-waiting and poet in the service of Emperor Nijō, who later also served Gishūmon'in, empress of Go-Toba.
The scene is late autumn as leaves fall, at a mountain stream where they scatter onto the water.
The direct occasion was the composition of a hundred-poem sequence; in the Shinkokinshū this headnote often refers to Retired Emperor Go-Toba's First Hundred-Poem Sequences of 1200.
The first line, "chirikakaru," means scattering down onto the water.
In the second line, "wa" marks the color of the leaves as the topic.
In the third line, "do" is concessive: "though the color is deep." "Fukashi" also suggests the depth of the water.
The fourth line, the realis form with "ba," means "when one crosses, it clouds."
The last line ends on a noun. Even a mountain stream brimming with the deep color of floating leaves turns cloudy when someone crosses and stirs the mud—a sense of beauty's fragility. Poem 530, drawing on the Kokinshū's "if I cross, the brocade will break," said "though no one crosses the stream, its brocade has broken off"; this poem says crossing clouds the water, reversing the same conceit between uncrossed and crossed waters. The point of interest is the contrast between the leaves' deep color and the water's clouding.
- Author
- Nijoin no Sanuki
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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?
- On Katano's moor where quail cry, a wax tree stands in its autumn red— as if to strip it bare now the autumn wind is blowing
- Down the Asuka the crimson leaves flow along; on Katsuragi the mountain's autumn wind must be blowing ceaselessly now
- On the Asuka, in each rapid, waves wash up crimson—it must be from Mount Katsuragi's peak the wintry wind has borne them