Noboriyuku yama no kumoi no tōkereba hi mo chikaku naru mono ni zo arikeru

English Translation

Climbing on, the height
where the clouds sit on the mount-
ain is far away
and so the sun — and the day —
come nearer with every step

Meaning

As I climb, the cloud-line on the mountain is still far off; and so the sun, and the day itself, come nearer with every step.

Commentary

44 The Wet Robe

Someone asked the priest Eshū when he would be going up to Mount Hiei, and he answered "Noboriyuku yama no kumoi no tōkereba hi mo chikaku naru mono ni zo arikeru". Then, the trouble mentioned earlier having come upon him in the middle of his practice, he composed "Nogaru tomo tare ka kizaramu nureginu ame no shita ni shi sumamu kagiri wa". That is the whole of the section.
Eshū appears here for the third time, after the forty-second and forty-third sections: in the first he serves a woman and becomes the subject of talk, and in the second he writes a poem on wood shavings and departs for the mountains. Of the questioner the prose tells us nothing.
The setting is the period of his practice.
What prompted the poem was the question of when he would go up to Mount Hiei. The poem is his answer.
A second poem follows in the same section, composed when trouble came upon him.

The opening names the cloud-line of the mountain he is climbing — the word covers both the clouded sky and the clouds themselves.
The third line says that it is far off: what he is climbing towards is high and distant.
The word in the fourth line means both the sun and an appointed day. To climb high is to approach the sun; and the day of his going is approaching too. One word holds both.
The closing, with an emphatic particle governing its verb, states it flatly: that is how it is. Asked when he will go, he answers that it draws nearer, implies that he has not arrived, and never names a day.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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