Naku shika no koe ni mezamete shinobu kana mihatenu yume no aki no omoi o - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

鳴く鹿の声に目覚めて偲ぶかな
見果てぬ夢の秋の思ひを

Roma-ji: Naku shika no koe ni mezamete shinobu kana mihatenu yume no aki no omoi o
English Translation: Waking at the voice
of the stag calling nearby,
I dwell with longing
on the autumn yearning left
in a dream I could not end
Meaning: Awakened by the voice of the calling deer, I linger longingly over the autumn sorrow of a dream I was not allowed to finish.
Commentary: Book Five Autumn Poems II 445

Headnote: "At the Poetry Contest in 1,500 Rounds."
This is the ninth poem of the deer sequence. Woken by the deer's cry, the speaker dwells on the autumn longing of a dream left unfinished. According to the headnote, it was composed for the Poetry Contest in 1,500 Rounds.
The author was a son of Regent Fujiwara no Tadamichi and a younger brother of Kujō Kanezane. He served four times as head of the Tendai school and wrote the history Gukanshō.
The scene is the middle of an autumn night, in a bedchamber where the deer's cry can be heard.
The direct occasion was the Poetry Contest in 1,500 Rounds, completed around 1202, in which the hundred-poem sequences Retired Emperor Go-Toba commissioned from thirty poets were matched in 1,500 rounds; it was not an actual gathering.

The first line presents a deer crying in the night.
The second line means that the deer's cry has broken the speaker's sleep. The sequence turns from poems hearing the deer outdoors to a poem of waking within the bedchamber.
In the third line, "shinobu" means to long for or recall fondly, and "kana" is an exclamatory particle. The poem breaks here.
The fourth line means "of a dream not seen to its end," showing that the dream was cut off by the deer's cry.
The last line gives the object of "shinobu" in inverted order. The autumn longing felt within the dream lingers after waking, and the speaker cherishes it. The deer's cry both breaks the dream and deepens the autumn sorrow. Waking at the deer's cry continues in "waking" in 447, "startled awake" in 448, and "waking" in 449, with this poem as the starting point.
Author: Jien
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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