Mono omoeba iro naki kaze mo nakarikeri mi ni shimu aki no kokoronarai ni

English Translation

When lost in grief,
no wind is without color
after all, it seems—
the way the heart has learned
from autumn that pierces me.

Meaning

When one is lost in grief, there is no such thing as a colorless wind after all—so has my heart been schooled by autumn, which pierces to the bone.

Commentary

Book Eight Lament Poems 797

Headnote: "When the sound of the wind came to me with deep pathos in the tenth month, after Retired Emperor Horikawa had passed away."
This is the twenty-third poem of the sequence remembering the dead through the things of autumn. It says that when one is lost in grief, there is no colorless wind after all, so has the heart been schooled by autumn, which pierces to the bone. According to the headnote, it was composed in the tenth month after Emperor Horikawa died, when the sound of the wind came to him with deep pathos.
The son of Minister of the Right Minamoto no Akifusa, the author rose to Grand Minister and founded the Koga house. His elder sister Kenshi, empress of Emperor Shirakawa, bore Emperor Horikawa, so the author was Emperor Horikawa's uncle.
The scene is the tenth month after Emperor Horikawa's death, and the place is not recorded.
The direct occasion is hearing the sound of the wind in the tenth month after Emperor Horikawa's death.
Emperor Horikawa died in Kajō 2 (1107). Calling the autumn wind "the colorless wind" derives from the Five Phases theory, which assigns white to autumn. The Kokin Waka Rokujō contains a poem by Ki no Tomonori saying that he had thought the autumn wind colorless, yet it pierced him to the bone.

The first line, "mono omoeba," means "when lost in grief." "Ba" is a conjunctive of condition, setting down as its premise the grief at losing Emperor Horikawa.
In the second line, "iro naki kaze mo," "iro naki kaze," the colorless wind, is the autumn wind. Even the wind that should have no color pierces the one lost in grief.
In the third line, "nakarikeri," "keri" is exclamatory, showing the realization that there was no such thing as a colorless wind. The poem pauses after the third line.
In the fourth line, "mi ni shimu aki no," "mi ni shimu" means "piercing through the body." It is a phrase drawing on the autumn wind that pierces the body in Tomonori's poem in the Kokin Waka Rokujō.
In the last line, "kokoronarai ni," "kokoronarai" is the habit of the heart, the way the heart has come to be. Through inversion, the reason for the first three lines is placed at the end. Because the heart has been schooled by the piercing wind of autumn, the wind of the tenth month too pierces to the bone. Following the wind in the pines of the preceding poem, 796, it again sings of the wind, and it also echoes the sound of the wind blowing through the body in 783 of this book.

Author

Minamoto no Masazane

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other