Nubatama no yoru sarikureba makimuku no kawato takashi mo arashi kamo toki

ぬばたまの夜さり来れば巻向の
川音高しもあらしかも疾き

Roma-ji: Nubatama no yoru sarikureba makimuku no kawato takashi mo arashi kamo toki
English Translation: When the jet-black night
comes on at last, the river
of Makimuku
roars aloud—is it perhaps
the mountain storm blowing fierce?
Meaning: When the jet-black night comes on, how loudly the Makimuku River roars—can it be that the mountain storm is blowing hard?
Commentary: Book Seven Miscellaneous Poems 1101

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "On Rivers"
As night falls, the rushing of the Makimuku River grows loud, and the poet wonders whether a storm is blowing hard. In the darkness only the sense of hearing is sharpened, catching the wild presence of the unseen mountains.
Like the preceding poem it sings of the Makimuku River, but where that poem praised its endless flow, this one captures the violence of the river's sound at night. It also echoes poem 1088 in this book, which linked the roar of the shallows with spreading clouds.
The left note says, "The two poems above come from the Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Collection."

The first line uses "nubatama no," a pillow word for "night."
In the second line, "comes on at last," "sarikuru" means for a time to arrive: "when night comes."
The third line, "of Makimuku," repeats the place name from the first line of the preceding poem, so the two poems continue singing of the Makimuku River.
In the fourth line, "roars aloud," "mo" is exclamatory: "how loud the river's sound!" The poem pauses here.
The final line, "is it perhaps the mountain storm blowing fierce?" is a kakari-musubi construction in which "kamo" is answered by the attributive "toki," guessing at the cause.
Source: Manyoshu
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