Kanete yori kozue no iro o omou kana shigure hajimuru miyamabe no sato

かねてより梢の色を思ふかな
時雨はじむる深山辺の里

Roma-ji: Kanete yori kozue no iro o omou kana shigure hajimuru miyamabe no sato
English Translation: Even now I think
of the colors to come forth
on the tips of trees,
as cold showers first begin
in this hamlet by the hills.
Meaning: Already I find myself imagining the colors the treetops will take on, now that the first autumn showers have begun in this village at the foot of the deep mountains.
Commentary: Autumn Poems 301

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "When people composed ten autumn poems each"
This is the sixth poem in the set of ten. Since the cold showers have begun to fall on the village near the deep mountains, the poet already imagines the treetops turning to autumn colors. The showers were thought to dye the leaves, and at their first falling his heart runs ahead to the season of autumn leaves.
The closing line, miyamabe no sato, is the same as in 254, the opening poem of this book; the village where autumn was first known by the wind now feels the first showers. The changing seasons of the same village are traced through poems that share this last line.

First line, “kanete yori”: beforehand, in advance.
Second line, “kozue no iro o”: the colors the treetops will take on as the leaves turn.
Third line, “omou kana”: kana is exclamatory, how I think of it; the poem breaks after the third line.
Fourth line, “shigure hajimuru”: the showers begin to fall; shigure was thought to color the leaves. It gives afterward, by inversion, the reason for the upper verse.
Fifth line, “miyamabe no sato”: ending on a noun, with the same line that closes 254.
Author: Saigyō
Source: Sankashu
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