Nubatama no yo no fukeyukeba hisagi ouru kiyoki kawara ni chidori shiba naku

ぬばたまの夜の更けゆけば久木生ふる
清き川原に千鳥しば鳴く

Roma-ji: Nubatama no yo no fukeyukeba hisagi ouru kiyoki kawara ni chidori shiba naku
English Translation: Pitch-black as nubatama,
as the night grows deep,
where the hisagi grow
on the pure riverbed
the plovers cry and cry
Meaning: As the jet-black night grows deeper, on the pure riverbed where the hisagi trees grow, the plovers cry again and again.
Commentary: Book Six Miscellaneous Poems 925

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Two envoys"
This poem says that as the night deepens, the plovers cry again and again on the pure riverbed of the Yoshino River, where the hisagi trees grow. Through the plovers' calls ringing in the stillness of night, it praises the purity of the Yoshino palace. As a landscape poem that captures a quiet night scene through sound, it is counted among Akahito's masterpieces.
The long poem immediately before (923) is the first of "Two poems composed by Yamabe no Sukune Akahito." It praises Emperor Shōmu's palace at Yoshino as a river bend enclosed by mountains like green hedges and threaded by a clear river, and closes by saying that the courtiers will always come here. The year of composition is not recorded, but the poems are placed after Kasa no Kanamura's poems from the Yoshino progress of the fifth month of Jinki 2 (725).
The poet, Yamabe no Akahito, was a court poet of the early Nara period who accompanied imperial progresses, chiefly in the reign of Emperor Shōmu, and left many poems. His rank and career are unknown, but he excelled in lucid poems of landscape, and the Japanese preface to the Kokin Wakashū names him alongside Kakinomoto no Hitomaro.

Where the preceding poem, 924, sang of birds in the mountains by day, this poem sings of plovers on the riverbed at night, forming a pair of day and night, mountain and river. Its final line, "the plovers cry and cry," is also the same as the line "upstream the plovers cry and cry" in Kasa no Kanamura's long poem of Jinki 2, 920, so that plovers are sung again and again as part of the Yoshino riverside scene.
The first line, "Pitch-black as nubatama," is a pillow word derived from the black seeds of the blackberry lily, and modifies words such as "night" and "black."
The second line, "as the night grows deep," is a definite condition formed by "-ba" on the realis form, marking the passage of time.
The third line, "where the hisagi grow," names the hisagi, a tree thought to be the catalpa or the Japanese mallotus, giving a concrete picture of the riverbed.
The fourth line, "on the pure riverbed," takes up the long poem's "the river bend with its pure flowing river" and uses "pure," the key word of Yoshino praise poems.
The final line, "the plovers cry and cry," means the plovers call again and again, "shiba" meaning often or repeatedly. The poem closes by letting the plovers' voices ring through the silence of the night.
Author: Yamabe no Akahito
Source: Manyoshu
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