Ono no Komachi, KKS:782, IM:131 (Love)

                Now that I am entering
              The winter of life,
                Your ardor has faded
              Like foliage ravaged
              By late autumn rains.
                       (Tr. Helen Craig McCullough)
                       ***

McCullough's commentary on this poem is quite extensive because it appears that the subtle texturing of the original defies translation. The last lines might be paraphrased, "The leaves, faded by the rains of late autumn, are not the only things that have lost color. The color (also `love') has even goen out of your vows."

Others interpret this to mean "Just as the late autumn rains bring fall color to the leaves, so my advancing years have changed the color of your affections" (p. 256).