秋の田のいねてふこともかけなくに
何を憂しとか人のかるらむ
何を憂しとか人のかるらむ
- Roma-ji
-
Aki no ta no ine chō koto mo kakenaku ni nani o ushi to ka hito no karuramu
- English Translation
-
Like the autumn fields,
though I never spoke the word,
"rice" or "go away,"
what is it she finds so bitter,
that she reaps herself from me?
- Meaning
- Though I have never said "go away," a word that sounds like the rice of the autumn fields, what can she find so hateful that she leaves me, as the rice is reaped?
- Commentary
-
Book Fifteen Love Poems V 803
Headnote: "Topic unknown."
The speaker laments that the lover is leaving though he never told her to go. Stringing pivot words from the rice field, ine as "rice" and "go away," karu as "reap" and "drift apart," and kake as hanging rice to dry and speaking words, the poem layers the departing lover onto a harvest scene.
The author, "Sosei Hōshi" in the body text, is given as the Priest Kengei in the widely circulated Teika-line texts and generally, and that attribution is followed here. Kengei was a monk of the early Heian period, about whom little is known.
The first line names the ripe autumn field, leading to rice-related words. "Autumn" may also echo "weariness."
In the second line ine is a pivot word, meaning both rice and "go away." Chō is a contraction of to iu.
In the third line kake means both hanging rice on drying racks and addressing words, and nakuni is a negative concessive.
The fourth line asks "finding what so bitter," with ka resolved by ramu in the last line.
In the last line karu means both reaping rice and a person drifting away, and ramu, the attributive of causal conjecture, closes the poem.
- Author
- Priest Kengei
- Source
- Kokin Wakashu
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Wasuregusa nani o ka tane to omoishi wa tsurenaki hito no kokoro narikeri
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Hatsukari no naki koso watare yo no naka no hito no kokoro no aki shi ukereba