The lower leaves… by Sone No Yoshitada

The lower leaves… by Sone No Yoshitada

One of my favorite poems is about dusk, by Sone No Yoshitada (c. 930-c. 1000) translated by Kenneth Rexroth:

The lower leaves of the trees

Tangle the sunset in dusk.

Awe spreads with

The summer twilight.

Translation appears in Americans’ Favorite Poems: The Favorite Poem Project Anthology, edited by Robert Pinsky and Maggie Dietz (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), page 307.

Dusk with tree branches

The following commentary was sent to me by a Japanese friend:

This poem is one of the poems collected in Fuboku-waka-shō, a collection of Japanese poems compiled in circa 1310.

Below is how the poem is written in Japanese script. (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Hi-gurureba shitaba koguraki ki-no moto-ni mono-osoroshiki natsu-no yūgure

Hi = “the sun”

gurureba (kurureba) = “after … sets”

So, Hi-gurureba = “after the sun sets”

shita = “lower part of…”

ba (ha) = “leaves”

ko = “a little”

guraki (kuraki) = “dark, shady”

ki-no = “trees”

moto-ni = “under …”

So, shitaba koguraki ki-no moto-ni = “where there is a little bit of darkness around the foot of trees”

mono- = prefix, meaning “something like…, a little bit of…”

osoroshiki (osoroshi) = “dreadful, awe-causing”

The meaning of osoroshi is not exactly “awe.” It has always been used to mean something fearful, dreadful, and scary. I checked several dictionaries to know what the word meant during that period.

natsu-no yūgure = “summer twilight”

So the literal meaning of the poem is something like:

“The lower leaves of the trees, where there is a little shadiness around the tree roots, something of an unknowable sense of vague dreadfulness is felt in the summer twilight.”

Sone-no Yoshitada = “Sone Yoshitada”

The preposition “-no” means “of.” So, “No Yoshitada” means from the family of “Sone.”

Incidentally, “Sone” is pronounced “Soné.”