秋深く露寒き夜のきりぎりす
ただいたづらに音をのみぞ鳴く
ただいたづらに音をのみぞ鳴く
- Roma-ji
-
Aki fukaku tsuyu samuki yo no kirigirisu tada itazura ni ne o nomi zo naku
- English Translation
-
Autumn has grown deep,
and on this night of chilly dew
the crickets cry—
all in vain, and all for naught,
only weeping out their voice.
- Meaning
- Autumn has deepened, and on this night of cold dew the crickets do nothing but cry aloud, all in vain.
- Commentary
-
Autumn Poems 251
Headnote: "Crickets"
On a night of cold dew as autumn deepens, the crickets do nothing but cry aloud in vain. In the voices of insects crying on without reaching anyone, the poet hears the loneliness of deepening autumn.
Kamo no Mabuchi marked it with a circle and commented on the headnote that the characters for "cricket" are read kōrogi in the Man'yōshū, but were early on mistakenly read kirigirisu. The Ruijū text gives lines 1 and 2 as aki fukami tsuyu samuki to ya, and the Teika text gives line 1 as aki fukami. In the source text consulted, characters in lines 1 and 5 are missing; line 1 has been read as aki fukaku from the syllable count and the flow of the words, and for line 5, following the transcriber's note that nozomi is a misprint for nomizo, it has been supplied from the Teika text's ne o nomi zo naku.
Line 1 means "autumn has deepened."
Line 2 means "of a night when the dew is cold."
Line 3, kirigirisu, is today's kōrogi, the cricket. Poems on crickets follow from here through 256.
Line 4 means "only in vain, to no purpose."
Line 5 concludes the binding particle zo with the attributive naku, "they do nothing but cry aloud." The next poem, 252, also sings of crickets on a deep-autumn night, so the two stand side by side.
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
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Tanomekoshi hito dani towanu furusato ni tare matsumushi no yowa ni nakuramu
- Next Poem
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Asajiwara tsuyu shigeki niwa no kirigirisu aki fukaki yo no tsuki ni nakunari