Ōzora no kumo no kayoiji mite shi kana tori nomi yukeba ato wa ka mo nashi

English Translation

How I should like to
see it — the road the clouds take
across the wide sky
Since only birds go that way
there is no track left, no trace

Meaning

How I should like to see it — the road the clouds travel across the wide sky. Only birds go that way, so no track is left behind.

Commentary

58 Kurozuka

While Taira no Kanemori was in Michinoku, a man descended from the Kan'in prince was living at a place called Kurozuka, and Kanemori teased his daughters as country ogres, composing "Michinoku no Adachigahara no Kurozuka ni oni komoreri to kiku wa makoto ka" and the like. In time he asked for one of the daughters in marriage, but her father said only that she was still very young and that when the proper time came — . Kanemori had to return to the capital, and likening the girl to the yellow roses of Ide he composed "Hanazakari sugi mo ya suru to kawazu naku Ide no yamabuki ushirometashi mo". As for Kurozuka: there was a wife of Lord Tsunetada who worked the name of the hot spring called the Natori Bath into a poem, and she it was who was mistress of Kurozuka. When she composed "Ōzora no kumo no kayoiji mite shi kana tori nomi yukeba ato wa ka mo nashi", Kanemori heard it and composed in the same manner "Shiogama no ura ni wa ama ya taenikemu nado sunadori no miyuru toki naki". As for the girl on whom Kanemori had set his heart, what he had feared came to pass. She came up to the capital with another man; and Kanemori, not knowing it, wrote asking why she had not let him know she had come. She sent back the very poem he had made about the yellow roses of Ide, saying it was his present. Understanding at last that he had been refused, he composed "Toshi o hete nurewataritsuru koromode o kyō no namida ni kuchi ya shinuramu" and sent it. That is the whole of the section.
Taira no Kanemori is one of the thirty-six poetic immortals; he exchanges poems with the Lady of Hyōe in the fifty-sixth section and with the daughter of Taira no Nakaki in the fifty-seventh. The man at Kurozuka was a descendant of the Kan'in prince, and his daughters are the ones Kanemori teased. Of Lord Tsunetada's wife the prose says only that she was mistress of Kurozuka.
The setting is again Michinoku. The prose says that this woman was mistress of Kurozuka.
What prompted the poem is not stated. She is introduced as the poet who worked the name of the Natori Bath into a poem, and this one is given in that connection.
Kanemori heard it and composed in the same manner. From there the section returns to the story of Kanemori and the girl. This poem was later included in the Shūi-shū.

The road the clouds take is a path across the sky that cannot be seen, and the poem begins by wishing to see it.
The verb form in the second line expresses a wish of one's own: how I should like to.
The fourth line says that only birds go there, its particle of limitation ruling out any human traveller.
The closing means that not a trace is left; the word covers footprints and any clue to follow. Birds leave no track, so there is no way of knowing the road. The prose notes that this poet worked a place name into her verse, introducing her as someone who practised the art of hiding a name inside a poem.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other