Shirakumo no mine ni shimo nado kayouran onaji Mikasa no yama no fumoto o - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

白雲の峰にしもなど通ふらん
同じ三笠の山の麓を

Roma-ji: Shirakumo no mine ni shimo nado kayouran onaji Mikasa no yama no fumoto o
English Translation: O white clouds, why is it
that you drift but to the peak,
coming and going,
and pass by the lower slopes
of the same Mikasa Hill?
Meaning: Why do the white clouds go only to the peak, passing by the foot of the very same Mount Mikasa?
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems I 1011

Headnote: "Sent on hearing that a man senior to him in the same office was visiting a woman he had been writing to."
This is the first poem of a sequence on love sung through mountains. Why do the white clouds go only to the peak and pass by the foot of the same mountain, the poet asks, reproaching a woman who favors a man above him in rank. According to the headnote, he sent it on hearing that his superior in the same office was visiting the woman to whom he had been sending letters.
The author, "Fujiwara no Yoshitaka," was a son of Fujiwara no Koretada, Kentoku-kō. He rose to Minor Captain of the Right but died of smallpox at only twenty-one. He was the father of Fujiwara no Yukinari, famed as a calligrapher.

The first line, "shirakumo no," names the white clouds on the peak, a figure for the woman.
In the second line, "shimo" is emphatic and "nado" means "why." The peak stands for his superior in the same office.
In the third line, "ran" conjectures a cause: why do they go there? The poem breaks here, inverted with the lower verse.
In the fourth line, Mount Mikasa is a hill at Kasuga in Yamato, also used as another name for the Palace Guards who protect the emperor. It draws on the fact that the poet and his superior both served in the Guards.
The last line, "yama no fumoto o," means "passing by me, the foot of the same mountain." The contrast of peak and foot lays higher and lower rank over success and failure in love, voicing resentment with a light touch. 990, which opens the book, also sings of "white clouds on the peak," and the image of clouds on a high peak as a beloved out of reach returns here.
Author: Fujiwara no Yoshitaka
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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