Aki tatsu to omou ni sora mo tada narade warete hikari o waken mikazuki

秋立つと思ふに空もただならで
われて光を分けん三日月

Roma-ji: Aki tatsu to omou ni sora mo tada narade warete hikari o waken mikazuki
English Translation: When I think autumn
has begun, even the sky
seems no common thing,
and the crescent, as if cracked,
would share out its slender light.
Meaning: When I think that autumn has begun, even the sky seems out of the ordinary, and the crescent moon looks as if it had split apart to share out its light.
Commentary: Autumn Poems 256

Headnote: "At the village of Tokiwa, when people composed poems on the moon in early autumn"
The headnote tells us this poem was composed at Tokiwa, a village on the western outskirts of the capital, when a group composed poems on the topic of the moon in early autumn. When the poet thinks autumn has come and looks up, even the sky seems out of the ordinary, and the thin crescent moon seems to be splitting apart to share out its light. In the crescent, shaped like a fragment broken from the full moon, he sees the beginning of autumn's moon.
The slender moon of early autumn is caught as the first sharing out of the light of the autumn moon that will grow full. Where the preceding poem knew autumn by the wind, this one feels it in the sky and the moon, so the images of autumn widen from wind to moon.

First line, “aki tatsu to”: the same as the first line of the preceding poem, that autumn has begun; placing it here ties the two poems together.
Second line, “omou ni sora mo”: mo implies not only my heart but even the sky.
Third line, “tada narade”: not ordinary, unlike usual, the special air of the sky at autumn's start.
Fourth line, “warete hikari o”: warete means split, the crescent looking like a broken piece of the round moon.
Fifth line, “waken mikazuki”: n is the attributive form of the conjectural mu, the crescent that would share its light, closing the poem on a noun.
Author: Saigyō
Source: Sankashu
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