Samidare no koro ni shi nareba araoda ni hito mo makasenu mizu tataikeri

五月雨の頃にしなれば荒小田に
人もまかせぬ水湛ひけり

Roma-ji: Samidare no koro ni shi nareba araoda ni hito mo makasenu mizu tataikeri
English Translation: Now that it has come,
this season of summer rains,
in the wasted fields,
with no hand to lead it there,
water brims up to the full.
Meaning: Now that the season of early summer rains has come, even the abandoned fields are brimming with water that no one has led into them.
Commentary: Summer Poems 214

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Early summer rains"
This is the eighth of the early summer rain poems and the last under this headnote. Now that the rainy season has come, even the abandoned fields, left untilled, are brimming with rainwater, though no one has channelled water into them. The poem pictures fields left by human hands and the long rains that fill them.
Where the preceding poem worried about seedlings in fields people had tended, this one depicts fields that no hand touches, pairing fields with and without human work.

First line, “samidare no”: the long rains of the Fifth Month.
Second line, “koro ni shi nareba”: shi is an emphatic particle, now that it is that very season.
Third line, “araoda ni”: fields left untilled and gone to waste.
Fourth line, “hito mo makasenu”: makasu is to lead water into a field, so this means water no one has channelled there.
Fifth line, “mizu tataikeri”: keri expresses realization on seeing the rainwater brimming. It uses the same word as mizu tatau in the first line of 207 of this book, so the group of rain poems under this headnote begins and ends with a scene of brimming water.
Author: Saigyō
Source: Sankashu
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