Nabete yo no oshisa ni soete oshimu kana aki yori nochi no aki no kagiri o

English Translation

To the common grief
all the world feels, I add more
and mourn it again—
the last of the autumn that
comes after the autumn's close

Meaning

Adding to the regret the whole world feels, I mourn once more the end of the autumn that came after autumn—the close of the intercalary Ninth Month.

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 550

Headnote: "On the theme of the last day of the intercalary Ninth Month."
This is the fourth and final poem of the sequence on autumn's end and the closing poem of Autumn Poems II. Adding to the regret the whole world feels for autumn, the poet mourns the end of the extra autumn month that came after autumn, the intercalary Ninth Month. According to the headnote, it was composed on the theme of the last day of the intercalary Ninth Month.
The author is given in the text only as "the Former Chancellor," and there is no settled view on whom this designates. The title means one who has retired from the office of Chancellor.
The scene is the last day of an intercalary Ninth Month, in the author's surroundings. An intercalary Ninth Month was an extra Ninth Month inserted after the regular one to adjust the calendar, so that autumn lasted a month longer that year.
The direct occasion was the theme of the last day of the intercalary Ninth Month.

In the first line, "nabete" means "general, all," so "of all the world."
The second line means "adding to the regret" that everyone feels at autumn's end.
In the third line, "kana" is exclamatory, and the poem breaks here. Taking up the resolve of 549, "let me mourn autumn," it voices the actual regret as an exclamation.
The fourth line, "aki yori nochi no," means "after autumn"—after the regular Ninth Month—referring to the intercalary month.
In the last line, "kagiri" is the end, given by inversion as the object of regret. Even an autumn lengthened by an extra month has at last reached its final day; the poem mourns a second time an autumn that had already ended, a doubled farewell that closes Autumn Poems II. It receives the book's succession of departing autumn—"the autumn that is passing" in 452, "autumn went away" in 546, "autumn has come to its end" in 547—and ends on autumn's very last day. Where the opening poem, 437, began with the deepening of autumn on a mountain evening as red leaves start to fall, this closing poem sings of the day autumn runs out, so that the book's first and last poems answer each other as autumn's deepening and its end.

Author

The Former Chancellor

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other