秋深くなりにけらしなきりぎりす
床のあたりに声聞こゆなり
床のあたりに声聞こゆなり
- Roma-ji
-
Aki fukaku narinikerashi na kirigirisu yuka no atari ni koe kikoyu nari
- English Translation
-
Deep has autumn grown,
so it seems to me now:
the cricket's voice
close by where I lie asleep
is heard crying in the night
- Meaning
- Autumn must have grown deep: I hear the cricket's voice close by my bed.
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 332
Headnote: "Composed when a cricket was crying nearby"
Composed when a cricket was crying nearby. Autumn must have grown deep, the emperor says, for the cricket's voice is heard by his bed. He knows the deepening of autumn from the insect that once lived in the fields coming close to human dwellings to escape the cold.
The author, "Kazan'in Gyosei," is Emperor Kazan, the sixty-fifth emperor and son of Emperor Reizei, who took holy orders after two years on the throne. He loved poetry and is said to have had a hand in the making of the Shūi Wakashū.
In the Chinese Classic of Poetry there is a poem in which the cricket comes under people's beds in the tenth month, and this poem is said to draw on that idea.
First line, "aki fukaku": "autumn grown deep," showing the season's deepening.
Second line, "narinikerashi na": "kerashi," a contraction of "keru rashi," expresses a grounded inference, and "na" is exclamatory. The poem pauses here.
Third line, "kirigirisu": an insect corresponding to the modern cricket. 329 of this book also sings of the kirigirisu.
Fourth line, "yuka no atari ni": "yuka" is the floor of a sleeping place, the bed, showing the insect has come from the fields close to where people sleep.
Fifth line, "koe kikoyu nari": "nari" infers from sound, "I hear its voice," giving the ground for inferring that autumn has deepened.
- Author
- Retired Emperor Kazan
- Source
- Senzai Wakashu
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