Ōnoyama kiri tachiwataru wa ga nageku okiso no kaze ni kiri tachiwataru

大野山霧立ちわたる我が嘆く
おきその風に霧立ちわたる

Roma-ji: Ōnoyama kiri tachiwataru wa ga nageku okiso no kaze ni kiri tachiwataru
English Translation: On Mount Ōno
mist is rising everywhere;
from my grieving sighs,
on the wind of that long breath,
mist is rising everywhere
Meaning: Over Mount Ōno the mist spreads everywhere; born on the wind of my grieving sighs, the mist spreads everywhere.
Commentary: Book Five Miscellaneous Poems 799

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "An elegy in Japanese: envoy"
The poet sees the mist rising over Mount Ōno, behind Dazaifu, as born from his own grieving breath. Repeating "mist is rising everywhere" in the second and last lines, he makes us feel a grief great enough to cover the mountain. The idea of sighs turning into mist also appears among the poems of the envoys to Silla in Book Fifteen.
This is the fifth of five envoys attached to the "Elegy in Japanese." The elegy is preceded by a Chinese preface and Chinese poem that cite Buddhist scripture at length on the impermanence of all living things and the grief of losing a wife; the long poem is called an "Elegy in Japanese" as the native-language counterpart to them. The left note says it was presented by Yamanoue no Okura, Governor of Chikuzen, on the twenty-first day of the seventh month of Jinki 5, and it is generally held that Okura composed it in the voice of Ōtomo no Tabito, Governor-General of Dazaifu, mourning the death of Tabito's wife.
The poet, Yamanoue no Okura, was an official who went to Tang China as a junior secretary with the embassy appointed in Taihō 1. After his return he served as Governor of Hōki and in the household of the Crown Prince, and late in the Jinki era he was posted to Tsukushi as Governor of Chikuzen. He is known for poems rooted in everyday life, on the sufferings of human existence, love for family, and poverty, written against a background of learning in Chinese classics and Buddhist scripture.

First line, "Ōnoyama": the mountain north of Dazaifu, on whose summit Ōno Castle was built. It fixes the scene in the actual landscape of Dazaifu.
Second line, "kiri tachiwataru": mist rising over everything; the poem breaks here, and the line returns as the last line.
Third line, "wa ga nageku": modifies "okiso no kaze," tracing the mist to his own grief.
Fourth line, "okiso no kaze ni": "okiso" is the breath let out in lament; the hyperbole is that his sighs become a wind that makes the mist.
Fifth line, "kiri tachiwataru": the second line is repeated, stressing a grief that blankets the mountain. As the last of the five envoys, it widens the view from the loneliness of the house in the first envoy to the landscape of Mount Ōno and closes the sequence.
Author: Yamanoue no Okura
Source: Manyoshu
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