Kannazuki furimi furazumi sadamenaki shigure zo fuyu no hajime narikeru - Gosen Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

神無月降りみ降らずみ定めなき
時雨ぞ冬の始めなりける

Roma-ji: Kannazuki furimi furazumi sadamenaki shigure zo fuyu no hajime narikeru
English Translation: The Godless Month—
now falling, now not falling,
never to be fixed,
it is the passing showers
that are the start of winter
Meaning: In the tenth month, the showers that fall and then stop, never settled, are what mark the beginning of winter.
Commentary: Book Eight Winter Poems 445

Headnote: "Topic unknown."
The poet says that the showers of the tenth month, falling and then stopping, never settled, are what mark the beginning of winter. Seizing on the way showers fall and cease by turns, the poem presents them as the sign that winter has come.
This poem, which declares the showers to be the start of winter, became widely known and was long recited as the representative poem of the idea that showers belong to early winter. Placed near the head of the book, it takes up the first showers of the two preceding poems and defines the showers themselves as the beginning of winter.
The poet is listed as "anonymous," and the composer's name has not come down to us. The text gives the poet as "yomibito mo," which is treated here as "anonymous."

The first line, "Kannazuki," is another name for the tenth month of the lunar calendar, the first month of winter. In this book "kannazuki" recurs in the first or third line of 447, 451 and other poems.
In the second line, "mi" is a suffix expressing actions that alternate: "now falling, now not falling."
The third line, "sadamenaki," means "never settled," describing the uncertain way the showers fall.
In the fourth line, "zo" is an emphatic particle: "it is the showers that, of winter..."
In the last line, "keru" is the attributive form of the exclamatory auxiliary "keri," expressing realization; it answers "zo" in a kakarimusubi pattern: "are the beginning, I now see."
Author: Unknown Poet
Source: Gosen Wakashu
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