真木の屋に時雨の音の変はるかな
紅葉や深く散り積もるらん
紅葉や深く散り積もるらん
- Roma-ji
-
Maki no ya ni shigure no oto no kawaru kana momiji ya fukaku chiritsumoruran
- English Translation
-
On my cedar roof
the sound of winter showers
has changed its tone;
have the crimson leaves come down
and gathered deep upon it?
- Meaning
- The sound of the winter showers on my roof of cedar boards has changed. Could it be that the crimson leaves have fallen and piled up deep upon it?
- Commentary
-
Book Six Winter Poems 589
Headnote: "When I presented a hundred-poem sequence."
This is the twentieth poem of the winter-showers sequence. Hearing that the sound of the showers on the roof of cedar boards has changed, the speaker infers that the crimson leaves may have fallen and piled up deep. According to the headnote, it was composed when a hundred-poem sequence was presented.
The author, "the Lay Monk Minister of the Left," is Sanjō Sanefusa. A son of the Palace Minister Fujiwara no Kiminori, he rose to Minister of the Left and later took holy orders.
The scene is early winter as the leaves fall, and the place is inside a house roofed with cedar boards.
The direct occasion is the presentation of a hundred-poem sequence. The headnote does not record for which gathering the hundred poems were composed.
The first line, "maki no ya ni," means "on the house roofed with boards of cedar or cypress."
The second line, "shigure no oto no," refers to the sound of the showers striking the roof.
The third line, "kawaru kana," means "how it has changed," and the poem breaks after the third line with the exclamatory particle "kana."
In the fourth line, "momiji ya fukaku," "ya" is an interrogative particle corresponding to "ran" in the last line.
The last line, "chiritsumoruran," means "have they fallen and piled up?" with "ran" as an auxiliary conjecturing the cause of something out of sight. From inside the house, the speaker infers the unseen leaves on the roof from a change in the sound of the showers, the same device as 553 in this book, which inferred gathering leaves from the sound of waves. The next poem, 590, also sings of a "house roofed with cedar," depicting first showers passing over its roof.
- Author
- Sanjō Sanefusa
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Now once again, though no leaves are scattering, something passes for the showers— falling alone, growing old, the wind in the garden pines
- In fair Yoshino the mountains cloud over and the snow comes down, while in the village at their foot the winter showers fall and fall
- To pass through this world is a hard and bitter thing, yet over my cedar roof how lightly it goes by, the first winter shower
- Faint and dimly bright, in the light of the moon of dawn, the lingering moon, blowing down the crimson leaves, the wind that sweeps down from the hills