まつ人にあらぬ物からはつかりのけさなくこゑのめづらしきかな

matsu hito ni aranu mono kara hatsukari no
kesa naku koe no mezurashiki kana

"It's not the person I have been waiting for:
Wild goose cries, how strange its voice..."

Fujiwara no Motokata, KKS 206.

The wild goose is returning to Japan to spend the winter there. Its cry announces the autumn. The poem is about rejected love, and meeting unexpectedly or unwantedly the autumn, which is perhaps also the autumn of the human life: old age...

Translation and commentary by Zoltan Barczikay.