Utsusemi no koe kiku kara ni mono zo omou ware mo munashiki yo ni shi sumaeba - Gosen Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

空蝉の声聞くからに物ぞ思ふ
我も空しき世にし住まへば

Roma-ji: Utsusemi no koe kiku kara ni mono zo omou ware mo munashiki yo ni shi sumaeba
English Translation: The cicada's voice,
no sooner do I hear it
than I fall to brooding,
for I too in this hollow world
go on living day by day
Meaning: No sooner do I hear the cicada's voice than I fall to brooding—for I too go on living in this hollow world.
Commentary: Book Four Summer Poems 195

Headnote: "Topic unknown."
As soon as the poet hears the cicada, he is seized by brooding, for he too lives in a hollow world. Echoing "utsusemi," the empty shell, with "munashiki yo," the hollow world, he lays his own impermanence over the cicada's fleetingness.
The poet is listed as "anonymous," and the composer's name has not come down to us.

The first line, "Utsusemi no," names the cicada or its cast-off shell, the same word as the third line of 192 in this book.
In the second line, "kara ni" means "as soon as": "no sooner do I hear its voice."
The third line, "mono zo omou," means "I fall to brooding," with the particle "zo" forming a kakarimusubi pattern with the attributive "omou." The poem pauses here, inverted with the lower verses.
The fourth line, "ware mo munashiki," means "I too, hollow," repeating the character for "empty" from "utsusemi" in the first line and binding the cicada to himself.
In the last line, "shi" is an emphatic particle, "sumae" is the perfective form of "sumau," to go on living, and "ba" marks a settled condition: "because I go on living in this world."
Author: Unknown Poet
Source: Gosen Wakashu
Prev Poem: Yaemugura shigeki yado ni wa natsumushi no koe yori hoka ni tou hito mo nashi
Next Poem: Ikaga semu Ogura no yama no hototogisu obotsukanashi to ne o nomi zo naku