Somayama ya kozue ni omoru yukiore ni taenu nageki no mi o kudakuran - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

杣山や梢に重る雪折れに
絶えぬなげきの身を砕くらん

Roma-ji: Somayama ya kozue ni omoru yukiore ni taenu nageki no mi o kudakuran
English Translation: O timber mountain!
Like boughs breaking with the snow
piled heavy on the treetops,
does my unending grief,
like firewood, break me apart?
Meaning: O timber mountain—as the boughs break under the snow piled heavy on the treetops, does my unending grief, like firewood, break me apart?
Commentary: Book Sixteen Miscellaneous Poems I 1582

Headnote: "Composed on the spirit of personal grievance through snow."
This is the sixth poem of the sequence on winter. As boughs on the timber mountain break under heavy snow on the treetops, the poet asks whether his unending grief is breaking him apart. According to the headnote, it was composed expressing personal grievance through snow.
The author, "Master of the Empress Dowager's Household Shunzei," is Fujiwara no Shunzei. He was the son of Fujiwara no Toshitada and the father of Teika. He served as Master of the Empress Dowager's Household and took the tonsure in Angen 2 (1176). He compiled the Senzai Wakashū.
A timber mountain is a mountain from which lumber is cut.

The first line, "somayama ya," presents a mountain for cutting timber, and "ya" is an exclamatory interjection, so the poem breaks after the first line.
The second line, "kozue ni omoru," means "piling heavy on the treetops." It takes up the falling white snow of the preceding poem.
The third line, "yukiore ni," refers to branches breaking under the weight of snow.
In the fourth line, "taenu nageki no," "nageki" plays on "nageki," grief, and "nageki," wood cast into the fire as fuel, an associated word of the timber mountain. It overlays the trees breaking in the snow with unending grief.
The last line, "mi o kudakuran," uses the present conjectural "ran," meaning "does it break me apart?" Like branches broken by snow, his body is broken under the weight of accumulated grief, entrusting the lament of old age to winter snow.
Author: Fujiwara no Shunzei
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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