草深き狩場の小野を立ち出でて
友まどはせる鹿ぞ鳴くなる
友まどはせる鹿ぞ鳴くなる
- Roma-ji
-
Kusa fukaki kariba no ono o tachiidete tomo madowaseru shika zo naku naru
- English Translation
-
From the grassy depths
of the hunting moor it has
come forth, wandering,
having lost its companions—
a deer, I hear, is crying.
- Meaning
- Having left the deep grass of the hunting moor, a deer that has lost its companions is crying—I hear its voice.
- Commentary
-
Book Twenty Buddhist Poems 1956
Headnote: "Crying in grief and sobbing, it sorely longs for its original herd."
This is the sixth poem in the sequence of poems from the Hundred Poems on Buddhist Texts by Jakuzen and others. The poet hears a deer, having left the grassy hunting moor, crying after losing its companions. According to the headnote, it was composed on the meaning of "Crying in grief and sobbing, it sorely longs for its original herd."
In the voice of a deer separated from its herd and crying sadly, the poet sees living beings who have strayed from the Buddha's world and long for their true refuge.
The author, "Sokaku Hōshi," was a monk of the late Heian period of whom little is known.
In this text, one character in the headnote is written as a nonstandard glyph.
The first line, "kusa fukaki," is thick grass, suggesting the depth of delusion.
The second line, "kariba no ono o," is the moor where hunting takes place, a dangerous place where life is threatened, overlaid with the perils of the world where beings live.
The third line, "tachiidete," means "having come out from the moor," showing separation from the herd.
The fourth line, "tomo madowaseru," means "having lost its companions," showing as a scene the scripture's "longs for its original herd."
The last line, "shika zo naku naru," closes the kakari-musubi of "zo" with "naru," the attributive of the hearsay-conjectural "nari," an auditory expression: the crying can be heard. It echoes the "moor where deer cry" of 1950 in this book through the scene of crying deer.
- Author
- Sokaku
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Prev Poem
-
Kyō suginu inochi mo shika to odorokasu iriai no kane no koe zo kanashiki
- Next Poem
-
Somukazu wa izure no yo ni ka meguriaite omoikeri tomo hito ni shiraren