Kita e yuku kari zo naku naru tsurete koshi kazu wa tarade zo kaeru beranaru - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

北へ行く雁ぞ鳴くなる連れて来し
数は足らでぞ帰るべらなる

Roma-ji: Kita e yuku kari zo naku naru tsurete koshi kazu wa tarade zo kaeru beranaru
English Translation: Going to the north,
the wild geese, I hear, cry out;
those who came as one
are going home with numbers
lacking, so it seems to me.
Meaning: I hear the wild geese crying as they fly back north. They came here together, but it seems they are going home with one of their number missing.
Commentary: Book Nine Travel Poems 412

Headnote: "Topic unknown"; left note: "It is said that a man and a woman went together to a distant province, and the man died soon after arriving. As the woman returned alone to the capital, she heard the geese crying on their way home and composed this."
Hearing the cries of wild geese returning north in spring, the poet imagines that they go home with their number broken. On the surface it is a poem of a flock of geese, but it lays upon them the grief of one who lost a traveling companion and must return alone.
According to the left note, a couple went down together to a province, the husband died soon after arriving, and the wife composed this on hearing the returning geese on her lonely way back to the capital. Knowing this, the words "their number lacking" ring with deep sorrow.
The author is recorded as "anonymous"; according to the left note, it is the poem of a woman who lost her husband.

The first line, "going to the north," shows the direction of the geese returning to northern lands in spring; the poet's own road back to the capital overlaps with theirs.
In the second line, "naru" is the attributive form of the inferential auxiliary "nari," closing the binding particle "zo." The geese are known by their cries rather than seen, and the poem breaks here.
In the third line, "shi" is the attributive form of the past auxiliary "ki," recalling how the flock arrived together in autumn.
In the fourth line, "de" is a negative conjunctive particle, "with the number lacking," and a second "zo" deepens the thought of the missing bird.
In the last line, "beranari" is an early Heian word of conjecture, "it seems they go home," and "naru" takes the attributive form to close the "zo" of the fourth line. After the preceding poem, 411, asks a bird about someone in the capital, this poem too entrusts to birds the thought of one who is lost, so two poems spoken through birds stand together.
Author: Unknown Poet
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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