Yū sareba michi mo mienedo furusato wa moto koshi koma ni makasete zo yuku

English Translation

Evening comes on and
the road is lost to sight, yet
to that old dwelling
I go, giving the horse its
head — it knew the way before

Meaning

Evening comes and the road is lost to sight; but to that old house of yours I go, giving the horse its head, for it knew the way before.

Commentary

56 The Horse That Knew the Road

Taira no Kanemori, Provisional Governor of Echizen, had been visiting a woman known as the Lady of Hyōe. After a long absence he went to her again and composed "Yū sareba michi mo mienedo furusato wa moto koshi koma ni makasete zo yuku", and her reply was "Koma ni koso makasetarikere hakanaku mo kokoro no kuru to omoikeru kana". That is the whole of the section.
Taira no Kanemori served as Provisional Governor of Echizen and is counted among the thirty-six poetic immortals; a provisional governor was one appointed over and above the regular establishment. He appears again in the fifty-seventh and fifty-eighth sections. Of the Lady of Hyōe the prose tells us only the office her name comes from.
The setting is the evening of the day he resumed a long-interrupted round of visits.
What prompted the poem was his coming to the house again after so long.
She answered with a poem of her own, and the exchange closes the section. This poem was later included in the Gosen-shū.

The opening says that evening has come and the road cannot be seen, with a concessive carrying past it: even so.
The word for the old place means somewhere one used to go often; here it is her house.
He goes by giving the horse its head, because the horse remembers even when the road is invisible. In place of an apology for his long absence, he says that the road is one even a horse has learned.
An emphatic particle governs the verb of going: this is how he comes. He presents a long-delayed visit as a matter of familiar habit — and that is what her reply will fasten on.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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