Umaoi no

馬追虫の/髭のそよろに/来る秋は
　　　まなこを閉じて/想い見るべし
(長塚節 1879-1915)

umaoi no / hige no soyoro ni / kuru aki ha
　　　manako wo tojite / omoimirubeshi
(Nagatsuka Takashi 1879-1915)

the autumn that comes
with the rustling
of a bush-cricket's whiskers
　　　is best imagined
　　　with eyes closed


That 'beshi' at the end is the same as the modern 'beki', Wikipedia notes in passing in the middle of this article about dialects. Of course you can't always trust Wikipedia, but it seems to make sense in the poem. The season word in this poem is the 'bush-cricket' (or 'katydid' if you prefer, or 'long-horned grasshopper' though that seems a little long), which is connected with the beginning of autumn. However, it seems a little odd that the season in this poem is imagined, so that we might wonder what season we should be imagining autumn from.

I hope that I'm correct in translating 'hige' as 'whiskers', as bush-crickets don't seem to have anything particularly closely resembling whiskers, though if you look at this picture you can kind of imagine them. The rustling of these whiskers is going to be pretty difficult to notice, so I wonder if that's part of what the poem is saying, that nature is better imagined than seen. On the other hand, the poem might be saying that autumn is a particularly subtle season by nature, compared with other seasons.

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'kuru aki wa' 'manako o tojite' 'omoimiru beshi'