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Audio: NHK Creative Library
Read by LibriVox volunteer Larry Wilson.
Audio courtesy of LibriVox (Public Domain).
春道列樹
山川に
風のかけたる
しがらみは
流れもあへぬ
紅葉なりけり
なかれもあ
へぬもみち
なりけり
やまが
- Poem 32
- 山川に
風のかけたる
しがらみは
流れもあへぬ 紅葉なりけり
Author: Harumichi no Tsuraki (dates unknown–920)
Source: Kokin Wakashū, Autumn
- English Verse Translation
- The stormy winds of yesterday The maple branches shook; And see! a mass of crimson leaves
Has lodged within that nook, And choked the mountain brook.
— William N. Porter, 1909
- Modern Translation
- The weir of fallen maple leaves, caught by the mountain wind across the stream — the water cannot flow through.
- Commentary
- According to the Kokin Wakashū's headnote, this poem was "composed while crossing the mountain pass of Shiga," describing a mountain stream the poet saw along the road from Kyoto to Ōtsu. The poem likens the maple leaves piled up in the stream, unable to flow on, to a beautiful weir built by the autumn wind.
- About the Poet
- Harumichi no Tsuraki was a descendant of the ancient and powerful Mononobe clan. In his youth he studied diligently as a monjōshō (student of literature). He was appointed Governor of Iki, but fell ill and died on the journey to take up his post, his ambitions unfulfilled. He left behind no personal poetry collection and is not widely known as a poet, but Fujiwara no Teika, the compiler of the Hyakunin Isshu, evidently admired this poem enough to allude to it in his own verse — a sign of how highly he regarded it.
- Harumichi no Tsuraki's Chart of the Heart
-
A chart and a modern-language reflection of the poet's inner feelings.
The Poet's Feelings (A Personal Interpretation)
What was damming the stream
was not branches, but fallen leaves.A view only autumn could paint —
I stop, and find myself lost in it.
- Poem Illustration
-
This image is based on an illustration from William N. Porter's A Hundred Verses from Old Japan, his 1909 English translation of the Hyakunin Isshu published in England, colorized and reworked using Adobe Firefly (generative AI).