Asajiwara tsuyu shigeki niwa no kirigirisu aki fukaki yo no tsuki ni nakunari

浅茅原露しげき庭のきりぎりす
秋深き夜の月に鳴くなり

Roma-ji: Asajiwara tsuyu shigeki niwa no kirigirisu aki fukaki yo no tsuki ni nakunari
English Translation: Cogon-covered ground,
in the garden thick with dew
the crickets now—
in the deep night of autumn
I can hear them sing to the moon.
Meaning: In the garden overgrown with cogon grass and heavy with dew, I hear the crickets singing beneath the moon on a deep autumn night.
Commentary: Autumn Poems 252

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Crickets"
In a ruined garden overgrown with cogon grass and drenched with dew, the poet hears crickets singing in the moonlight of a deep autumn night. Through the ruined garden, the moon, and the insect voices, he portrays both the loneliness and the purity of a late-autumn night.

Line 1, asajiwara, is a field thick with low cogon grass, showing the garden's ruin.
Line 2, "of the garden heavy with dew," is hypermetric.
Line 3 is the same word as line 3 of the preceding poem, 251.
Line 4, "on a deep autumn night," takes up "autumn deep, on a night of cold dew" in the preceding poem.
Line 5: nari infers from sound, sensing the voices singing in the moonlight. Whereas the preceding poem sang of crickets on a night of cold dew, this one sings of crickets on a moonlit night, leading on to "the crickets of the capital of the moon" in the next poem, 253.
Author: Minamoto no Sanetomo
Source: Kinkaishu
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