Samushiro ni omoi koso yare sasa no ha ni sayuru shimoyo no oshi no hitorine - Kinyo Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

さむしろに思ひこそやれ笹の葉に
冴ゆる霜夜の鴛の独り寝

Roma-ji: Samushiro ni omoi koso yare sasa no ha ni sayuru shimoyo no oshi no hitorine
English Translation: On my narrow mat
my heart goes out in longing
to the bamboo grass
where frost lies cold in the night
and the mandarin duck sleeps alone
Meaning: Lying on my cold, narrow mat, I think of the mandarin duck sleeping alone on a frosty night, when the frost lies freezing on the leaves of bamboo grass.
Commentary: Book Four Winter Poems 298

Lying on a chilly mat, the poet thinks of the mandarin duck sleeping alone on a night when frost lies freezing on the bamboo grass. In the solitary sleep of a bird said to live always with its mate, the poet sees the loneliness of their own sleeping alone.
Like the preceding poem, 297, it sings of the winter bed of mandarin ducks, and two poems on them stand side by side. Where the preceding poem pictured floating sleep on an icy pond, this one imagines solitary sleep on a frosty night. It also recalls 'the icy pillow' of the water birds in poem 275 in this book.
The author, Akisue, is Fujiwara no Akisue. A son of Fujiwara no Takatsune, he was trusted as a close retainer of Emperor Shirakawa because his mother had been the emperor's wet nurse, and he rose to Master of the Office of Palace Repairs. He founded the Rokujō Fujiwara house of poetry.

First line, 'samushiro ni', is a pivot word in which samushiro is both a narrow straw mat and samushi, cold, left in kana.
Second line, 'omoi koso yare', means my heart goes out, koso binding with the realis yare. The poem breaks after the second line and the lower half is inverted.
Third line, 'sasa no ha ni', means on the leaves of bamboo grass, where the frost lies.
Fourth line, 'sayuru shimoyo no', means of a frost night freezing cold.
Final line, 'oshi no hitorine', is the solitary sleep of the mandarin duck, closing with a noun and taking up 'the mandarin ducks of the pond' in the final line of the preceding poem, 297.
Author: Fujiwara no Akisue
Source: Kinyo Wakashu
Prev Poem: Namimakura ika ni ukine o sadamuramu kōri masuda no ike no oshidori
Next Poem: Nani to naku toshi no kururu wa oshikeredo hana no yukari ni haru o matsu kana