Are the first wild geese
a line of the ones I long
for, that their voices
crying as they fly the sky
of travel should be so sad

Meaning

Are these first wild geese a line of the people I long for? Their voices crossing the traveller's sky sound so sad.

Commentary

Part One: Suma

　On an evening when the garden flowers were at their height, Genji went out to the gallery with a view of the sea and stood there. Boats sang far out on the water, and looking no bigger than small birds afloat they only added to the desolation. Then geese came over in a line, their cries mixed with the sound of oars; Genji wept and spoke this poem, and Yoshikiyo, the Minbu no Taifu, and the former Lieutenant of the Right answered one after another. The men's longing for the capital was eased a little by it.

　"Hatsukari" are the first geese of autumn. "A line of the ones I long for" sees the people of the capital in the file of birds. "The sky of travel" joins migratory geese to a man in exile. Behind it lies the old association of the goose as a bearer of letters, but here it is the formation itself in which he sees the faces he misses, and it sets off the four linked poems that follow.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Are the first wild geese a line of the ones I long for, that their voices crying as they fly the sky of travel should be so sad

Are the first wild geese
a line of the ones I long
for, that their voices
crying as they fly the sky
of travel should be so sad