Karite hosu yamada no ine no kokitarete naki koso watare aki no ukereba - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

刈りて干す山田の稲のこきたれて
なきこそわたれ秋の憂ければ

Roma-ji: Karite hosu yamada no ine no kokitarete naki koso watare aki no ukereba
English Translation: Like mountain rice,
cut and hung up to dry,
stripped and dripping,
so I go on weeping, crying,
for autumn is so sad.
Meaning: Like the rice from a mountain field, cut and hung to dry, then stripped of its grain, my tears keep falling, and I go on weeping, for autumn is so sorrowful.
Commentary: Book Seventeen Miscellaneous Poems I 932

Headnote: "Composed to match a painting on a screen and written on it"
Composed to match a painting on a screen and written beside it. Using as an introduction the scene of stripping grain from rice cut and dried in a mountain field, the poet sings of weeping on and on at the sorrow of autumn. In the single word naki, the crying of birds is overlaid with a person weeping.
The author, "Sakanoue no Korenori," is Sakanoue no Korenori, said to be a descendant of Sakanoue no Tamuramaro, who served as vice-governor of Kaga and in other posts. Also known as a master of kemari football, he is one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals.
This poem is placed at the end of Miscellaneous Poems I. Where poem 863 at the head of the book sang of drops from an oar on the River of Heaven, this one closes the book with the image of grain stripped from the ears, and the opening and closing poems can be read as answering one another in images of drops and grains spilling down.

First line "karite hosu" shows the autumn farm work of drying harvested rice.
Second line "yamada no ine no" is the rice of a mountain field; the first two lines form a preface to the third.
Third line "kokitarete" is a pivot word joining stripping the grain from rice ears and shedding tears profusely.
Fourth line "naki koso watare": naki is a pivot word joining birds "crying" and people "weeping." Koso forms a kakari-musubi with watare: I go on weeping.
Fifth line "aki no ukereba" gives the reason by inversion with the causal ba. It pairs with "yo wa haru nare ya" in the preceding poem, 931, turning from the joy of spring to the sorrow of autumn as the book closes.
Author: Sakanoue no Koreyuki
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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