Furusato ni koromo utsu to wa yuku kari ya tabi no sora ni mo nakite tsuguran

English Translation

That in my old home
they are beating robes, perhaps
the wild geese in flight
cry out across the far sky
telling it to one who roams

Meaning

Do the wild geese passing overhead cry out even to one beneath a traveler's sky, telling him that robes are being beaten at home?

Commentary

Book Five Autumn Poems II 481

Headnote: "Composed on fulling cloth."
This is the seventh poem of the fulling-block sequence. The poet wonders whether the passing wild geese cry out to a traveler under a distant sky that robes are being beaten at home. According to the headnote, it was composed on the topic "fulling cloth."
The author was a son of Minamoto no Michikata who rose to Major Counselor and died at his post as Supernumerary Governor-General of Dazaifu. He excelled in Chinese verse, waka, and music.
The scene is autumn as the wild geese migrate, beneath a traveler's sky and at the home where robes are beaten.
The direct occasion was the topic "fulling cloth."
From the Chinese tale of Su Wu, who sent a letter tied to a wild goose's leg, geese are sung of as messengers carrying word to people far away.

In the first line, "furusato" is the home the traveler has left behind.
The second line means "that robes are being beaten," setting out in advance, by inversion, what is "told" in the last line.
In the third line, the interrogative "ya" is bound to "ran" in the last line. The geese, seen as messengers, are cast as envoys from home to the traveler.
In the fourth line, "mo" implies "to the traveler's sky too, not only at home."
In the last line, "ran" is the attributive of the conjectural "ramu." From the traveler's side, the poem thinks of the household beating robes at home and entrusts that news to the cry of the geese. Like 475, which imagined a distant wife fulling cloth, it thinks of the beater from afar; the next poem, 482, also sets wild geese in the scene but depicts the one who waits beating the robes, so the two form a pair of the awaited and the waiting.

Author

Minamoto no Tsunenobu

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other