Kurikoma no yama ni asa tatsu kiji yori mo kari ni wa awaji to omoishi mono o

English Translation

More warily than
the pheasant that takes wing at
dawn from Kurikoma
means to keep clear of the hunt
I meant to keep clear of this

Meaning

More warily than the pheasant taking wing at dawn from Kurikoma means to keep clear of the hunt, I meant to keep clear of a passing love.

Commentary

82 I Meant Not to Meet by Chance

Afterwards the Provisional Middle Counsellor still sent Ukon no word, and then sent her a pheasant; this poem was her answer. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
Ukon was a daughter of the Lesser Captain Suenawa and is known as a poet. She appears in five consecutive sections, the eighty-first through eighty-fifth; the poem of the eighty-fourth was taken into the Shūi-shū and into the Hundred Poems by a Hundred Poets. The Provisional Middle Counsellor appears in the eighty-first section, where she sends him a poem asking after his words.
The setting is the arrival of the pheasant after a long silence. Kurikoma was known as hunting country.
What prompted the poem was the pheasant itself. It is her reply.
The section ends with the poem; no response and no later event is recorded.

The gift itself is where the poem starts: the word for pheasant carries the sound of the words for will not come, so that a man who sends a bird and no message has his conduct written into the present he sent.
The pheasant taking wing at dawn from the hunting hills is game, a bird that must watch out for the hunt.
The word in the fourth line means both a hunt and a passing, casual thing, so that the bird's evading the hunters and her own resolve to avoid a light affair are one phrase.
The closing breaks off on a particle of regret: so she had meant, and yet. She was on her guard and it happened anyway, and the conclusion is left without a verb.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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