紅葉葉は道もなきまで散り敷きぬ
わが宿を訪ふ人しなければ
わが宿を訪ふ人しなければ
- Roma-ji
-
Momijiba wa michi mo naki made chirishikinu waga yado o tou hito shi nakereba
- English Translation
-
The scarlet leaves
have scattered and spread so thick
the path is lost from sight—
for to visit my abode
there is no one ever comes.
- Meaning
- The autumn leaves have fallen so thick that the path has disappeared—for no one comes to visit my house.
- Commentary
-
Autumn Poems 309
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Poems of late autumn"
The autumn leaves have fallen and spread so thick that the path can no longer be seen, for no one comes to visit the poet's house. He overlays the leaves piling up untrodden with the loneliness of a dwelling no one visits.
According to the source's note, line 3 read chirishiki in the original and the editor emended it to chirishikinu following the Ruijū text; this edition follows that emendation.
Line 1 means "the autumn leaves."
Line 2 means "until there is no path."
Line 3: nu marks completion, "have fallen and covered all," and the poem pauses here. Following the leaves floating on the water in 296, this one sings of autumn leaves spread over the ground.
Line 4 means "to visit my house."
Line 5: shi is an emphatic particle and ba after the evaluative form gives the cause, so through inversion the reason the path is buried comes last. Like "the old village where even he does not visit" in 250, it sings of the loneliness of a dwelling no one visits.
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
- Prev Poem
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Akihagi no shitaba no momiji utsuroinu nagatsuki no yo no kaze no samusa ni
- Next Poem
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Konoha chiru aki no yamabe wa ukarikeri taede ya shika no hitori nakuramu