Akikaze wa yaya hadasamuku narinikeri hitori ya nenamu nagaki kono yo o

秋風はやや肌寒くなりにけり
ひとりや寝なむ長きこの夜を

Roma-ji: Akikaze wa yaya hadasamuku narinikeri hitori ya nenamu nagaki kono yo o
English Translation: The wind of autumn
has gradually grown
chilly on the skin—
must I go to sleep alone
through this night so long?
Meaning: The autumn wind has gradually turned chill against the skin—must I sleep alone through this long night?
Commentary: Autumn Poems 267

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Autumn poems"
On a night when the autumn wind has gradually turned chill on the skin, the poet laments that he may have to sleep alone through the long autumn night. He frankly overlays the cold of autumn felt on the skin with the length of a night spent sleeping alone.
Kamo no Mabuchi marked it with a circle. Lamenting the long night of sleeping alone recalls Kakinomoto no Hitomaro's poem in the Shūi Wakashū, later chosen for the Hyakunin Isshu, which likens the long night of solitary sleep to the trailing tail of the mountain pheasant.

Line 1 sets the autumn wind as the subject.
Line 2: yaya means "gradually, little by little."
Line 3: keri expresses realization, and the poem pauses here; it is the same as line 3 of 231.
Line 4 means "must I sleep alone?", concluding ya with namu; the poem pauses again here. It is the same as line 4 of 231, so the two poems sing of the cold autumn wind and sleeping alone in the same form.
Line 5 gives last, through inversion, the length of the night of solitary sleep. Following the preceding poem, 266, which sang of the autumn wind piercing one who longs for his beloved, this one sings of that longing as the lament of sleeping alone.
Author: Minamoto no Sanetomo
Source: Kinkaishu
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