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Kokinshu #282
Thursday, 2 August 2012 07:07 Written in seclusion in a mountain village, having not served at court for a long time.
The autumn leaves fenced
by cliffs in the mountain deeps
must have scattered
-- there's never a time they see
the light of the shining sun.
okuyama no
iwagaki momiji
chirinubeshi
teru hi no hikari
miru toki nakute
---L.
The autumn leaves fenced
by cliffs in the mountain deeps
must have scattered
-- there's never a time they see
the light of the shining sun.
—21 July 2012
Original by Fujiwara no Sekio (815–853), whose up-and-down career included stints in the imperial household and a governorship of a far-eastern province in what's now the Tokyo area. He was noted in his day as musician and calligrapher, and for a love of the hills east of the capital that resulted in the sobriquet Gentleman of the Eastern Mountains -- his estate there became Zenrin Temple after his death. He has two poems in the Kokinshu. ¶ Given that headnote and Sekio's history, the leaves are usually read as symbolic of himself out of the light of imperial favor.okuyama no
iwagaki momiji
chirinubeshi
teru hi no hikari
miru toki nakute
---L.