旅人の袖吹き返す秋風に
夕日寂しき山のかけはし
夕日寂しき山のかけはし
- Roma-ji
-
Tabibito no sode fukikaesu akikaze ni yūhi sabishiki yama no kakehashi
- English Translation
-
The traveler's sleeves
are blown back upon themselves
by the autumn wind;
lonely in the evening sun,
the plank bridge along the mountain.
- Meaning
- The autumn wind blows back the traveler's sleeves, and the evening sun falls lonely on the plank road clinging to the mountain.
- Commentary
-
Book Ten Travel Poems 953
Headnote: "Composed as a travel poem."
This is the fourth of a sequence of poems on the road at nightfall and lodging for the night. In the autumn wind that blows back the traveler's sleeves, the evening sun falls lonely on the plank road along the mountain, the loneliness of a mountain road at dusk rendered as a single scene. According to the headnote, it was composed as a travel poem.
No author is named, and the poem continues from the preceding one as a work of Fujiwara no Teika. A son of Fujiwara no Shunzei, he was a poet of the early Kamakura period and one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashū.
The scene is an autumn evening, at a plank road on the mountainside.
The direct occasion is composing on the topic of "travel."
The first line, "tabibito no," means "of the traveler." It depicts the traveler from outside.
The second line, "sode fukikaesu," means "blowing back his sleeves." The sleeves flung back by the wind show the strength of the wind and the traveler's forlornness.
The third line, "akikaze ni," means "in the autumn wind." Following "akikaze zo fuku" in 920, the autumn wind of a journey is sung of again.
The fourth line, "yūhi sabishiki," means "lonely in the evening sun." Following "yūhi sasu" in 951, a road in the evening sun is sung of again.
The last line, "yama no kakehashi," means "the plank road along the mountain," ending on a noun. It is the same last line as 906: where that poem sings of a traveler wondering whether to cross the plank road beneath trailing white clouds today, this poem paints the plank road as a scene in autumn wind and evening sun.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Teika
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- In the evening sun crossing the plain of low reeds, that traveler there— ah, where will he find tonight a lodging for his rest?
- Where, oh where tonight shall I borrow a lodging, in hunting robes, the day, like its cords, tied to dusk, as the storm blows from the peaks?
- The storm winds I heard in my old home do not sound anything like these; forget the one you left behind, here at Saya-no-Nakayama.
- Where the white clouds lie, how many ranges of peaks might I now have crossed, leaving my sleeves to the storm whose ways I have never known?