Mushi no ne mo honoka ni narinu hanasusuki aki no sueba ni shimo ya okuramu

虫の音もほのかになりぬ花薄
秋のすゑ葉に霜や置くらむ

Roma-ji: Mushi no ne mo honoka ni narinu hanasusuki aki no sueba ni shimo ya okuramu
English Translation: The insects' voices
too have faded almost gone—
plumes of pampas grass,
on your last leaves of the autumn
is the frost now lying there?
Meaning: Even the insects' voices have grown faint—is frost now settling on the leaf-tips of the pampas grass at autumn's end?
Commentary: Autumn Poems 306

Headnote: "On the spirit of 'In the ninth month frost falls; autumn turns cold early'"
The poet composed this on the theme "In the ninth month frost falls; autumn turns cold early." From the fading of the insects' voices he surmises that frost may be settling on the leaf-tips of the pampas grass at autumn's end, portraying a late autumn in which the cold has come early.
This poem was included in the Shokukokin Wakashū.

Line 1 means "the insects' voices too." The insects that sang so busily in the insect poems from 248 on have here fallen nearly silent.
Line 2: nu marks completion, "have grown faint," and the poem pauses here.
Line 3, hanasusuki, is pampas grass in plume. The plumed pampas of 213 is sung here as touched by frost at autumn's end.
Line 4: sue is a pivot word meaning both the "end" of autumn and the "tips" of the leaves, sueba.
Line 5: ya is an interrogative binding particle concluded by the attributive of the present conjectural ramu, presenting the "frost falls" of the theme.
Author: Minamoto no Sanetomo
Source: Kinkaishu
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