とことはに吹く夕暮の風なれど
秋立つ日こそ涼しかりけれ
秋立つ日こそ涼しかりけれ
- Roma-ji
-
Tokotowa ni fuku yūgure no kaze naredo aki tatsu hi koso suzushikarikere
- English Translation
-
Though it is the same
evening wind that always blows
at the close of day,
on this day when autumn starts
how cool it feels upon me
- Meaning
- It is the same evening wind that blows at dusk every day, yet on this day, when autumn begins, it feels truly cool.
- Commentary
-
Book Three Autumn Poems 156
The evening wind should be the same as ever, yet on the first day of autumn it alone feels especially cool. The poem captures how the awareness that autumn has begun by the calendar makes the same wind feel like an autumn wind.
This is the opening poem of Book Three, Autumn Poems. It takes up poem 155, which closed Book Two by wondering at the water's edge of the summer's-end purification whether autumn had come overnight, and begins the autumn book with the coolness of the wind on the day autumn starts. The book's last poem, 256, is also by this author, so that poems by Kinzane frame both the beginning and the end of autumn.
The author, Kinzane, is Fujiwara no Kinzane. A son of Fujiwara no Sanesue, he rose to Provisional Major Counselor and also served as Master of the Crown Prince's Household. He was an active poet in the circle of Emperor Horikawa.
First line, 'tokotowa ni', means always, forever, showing that the wind blows unchanged.
Second line, 'fuku yūgure no', means blowing at dusk, choosing the hour of the day when coolness is most easily felt.
Third line, 'kaze naredo', means though it is the wind, a concession turning to the special nature of the first day of autumn in the lower half.
Fourth line, 'aki tatsu hi koso', means this day when autumn begins, and koso binds with the realis kere in the final line. The arrival of autumn that poem 155 of Book Two could only guess at is here received as a fact of the calendar.
Final line, 'suzushikarikere', means how cool it feels, the exclamatory keri expressing a coolness noticed for the first time today.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Kinzane
- Source
- Kinyo Wakashu
- Prev Poem
-
Misogi suru migiwa ni kaze no suzushiki wa hitoyo o komete aki ya kinuramu
- Next Poem
-
Makuzu hau ada no ōno no shiratsuyu o fuki na midari so aki no hatsukaze