Waga koi wa matsu o shigure no somekanete makuzugahara ni kaze sawagu nari - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

我が恋は松を時雨の染めかねて
真葛が原に風騒ぐなり

Roma-ji: Waga koi wa matsu o shigure no somekanete makuzugahara ni kaze sawagu nari
English Translation: This love of mine is
the autumn rain that fails
to dye the pine,
while across Makuzu Plain
the wind goes rustling wild
Meaning: My love is like the autumn showers that cannot dye the evergreen pine; and over the plain of Makuzu I hear the wind rising in turmoil.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems I 1030

Headnote: "Composed when he presented a hundred-poem sequence."
This is the sixth poem of the sequence on hidden love that turns on whether feeling shows in one's color. Through autumn showers unable to dye the evergreen pine and wind raging over the plain of arrowroot, it sings of a love that cannot move the beloved's heart and falls into turmoil. According to the headnote, it was composed when he presented a hundred-poem sequence.
The author, "Former Archbishop Jien," was a son of the Regent Fujiwara no Tadamichi. He served four times as head of the Tendai school and wrote the history Gukanshō.

The first line, "waga koi wa," opens with the same first line as the preceding poem.
The second line, "matsu o shigure no," means "the showers, the pine." Autumn showers were thought to dye leaves, but the evergreen pine does not take the color.
The third line, "somekanete," means "unable to dye," laying over it a love that cannot move the beloved's heart.
In the fourth line, Makuzugahara was a plain thick with arrowroot in the Eastern Hills of the capital, around present-day Maruyama Park. Because arrowroot leaves turn over in the wind to show their undersides, it was sung as an image calling up resentment.
In the last line, "nari" infers from sound: I hear the wind in turmoil. The scene moves from showers that cannot dye the pine to wind raging across the arrowroot plain, showing through landscape alone a love that can no longer be hidden and tumbles into resentment. Like the "showers trickling through the lower leaves" of Retired Emperor Go-Toba's preceding poem, it sings of showers and evergreens, so the three poems from 1028 on stand together in autumn showers.
Author: Jien
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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