Tague kuru matsu no arashi ya tayumuran onoe ni kaeru saoshika no koe

English Translation

Has the pine-tree gale
that brought it along grown slack?
Back toward the peak
returning now, it fades off—
the voice of the calling stag

Meaning

Has the storm in the pines that carried it here begun to slacken? The voice of the stag now seems to return toward the summit.

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 444

Headnote: "When composing a hundred-poem sequence."
This is the eighth poem of the deer sequence. Perhaps the storm in the pines that carried the voice has slackened, for the stag's voice seems to return toward the summit. According to the headnote, it was composed as part of a hundred-poem sequence.
The author was a son of Kujō Kanezane who rose to Regent and Chancellor and was called Go-Kyōgoku-dono. He wrote the kana preface of the Shinkokinshū.
The scene is autumn with a storm in the pines, on a mountain where the deer's voice recedes toward the peak.
The direct occasion was the composition of a hundred-poem sequence, though the headnote gives neither its name nor its date.

In the first line, "tague" is the continuative of the lower bigrade verb "taguu," meaning to take along: the storm in the pines has come bearing the deer's voice.
In the second line, "ya" is an interrogative particle. The wording takes up "crossing the pine tops" and "lodged in the storm" from 442.
In the third line, "tayumu" means to slacken, and "ran," the attributive of the conjectural "ramu," is bound to "ya."
The fourth line grasps the voice, no longer reaching the listener as the storm weakens and receding toward the peak, as a voice returning home. "Summit" corresponds to "the moon upon the summit" in 438.
The last line ends on a noun and matches the last lines of 439 and 442. Linking the strength of the wind to the distance of the voice, the poem depicts movement through space by sound alone. Setting a returning voice against the outgoing voice of 442, it forms a pair and closes the series on deer voices carried by the wind. From 445 the sequence moves to poems of waking at the deer's cry.

Author

Fujiwara no Yoshitsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other