Naki yowaru magaki no mushi mo tomegataki aki no wakare ya kanashikaru ran - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

鳴き弱る籬の虫もとめがたき
秋の別れや悲しかるらん

Roma-ji: Naki yowaru magaki no mushi mo tomegataki aki no wakare ya kanashikaru ran
English Translation: Growing faint in song,
even the insects by the fence
cannot hold it back:
is it the parting from autumn
that makes them grieve so?
Meaning: Are even the insects by the fence, their songs growing faint, grieving at this parting from autumn, which no one can hold back?
Commentary: Book Seven Parting Poems 478

Headnote: "Composed when someone about to go to a distant place came to visit and left at dawn, on the last day of the Ninth Month, when the insects' voices were deeply moving"
Composed when someone about to go down to a distant province came to visit and left at dawn; it happened to be the last day of the Ninth Month, the final day of autumn, and the insects' voices sounded deeply moving. Are even the insects by the fence, their songs growing faint, grieving at the parting from autumn, which cannot be held back? The poet overlays the departing autumn with the friend setting out on a long journey and entrusts her own sorrow to the feeble insect voices. The poem is also included in the Murasaki Shikibu Shū as a farewell to someone leaving for a distant place.
The author, "Murasaki Shikibu," was the daughter of Fujiwara no Tametoki, Governor of Echizen. She served Shōshi, consort of Emperor Ichijō, and wrote The Tale of Genji and The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu. She is one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals of the Middle Ages and has a poem in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu.

First line, "naki yowaru": "growing faint in their singing," the state of insects in late autumn.
Second line, "magaki no mushi mo": "magaki" is a loosely woven fence of brushwood or bamboo. "Mo" implies "the insects too, just like me."
Third line, "tomegataki": "impossible to hold back," evoking both the departing autumn and the departing friend.
Fourth line, "aki no wakare ya": the parting from autumn on its last day. The interrogative "ya" closes with the attributive "ran" in the last line.
Fifth line, "kanashikaru ran": the present conjecture "ran" wonders whether the insects are grieving, and lays her own grief over theirs.
Author: Murasaki Shikibu
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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