Makimuku no hibara ni tateru harugasumi ōni shi omowaba nazumi kome ya mo

巻向の桧原に立てる春霞
おほにし思はばなづみ来めやも

Roma-ji: Makimuku no hibara ni tateru harugasumi ōni shi omowaba nazumi kome ya mo
English Translation: At Makimuku's
forest of cypress trees stands
the haze of the spring;
were my thoughts but vague as that,
would I toil my way here?
Meaning: O spring haze rising over the cypress forest of Makimuku—if my feelings were only half-hearted, would I have struggled all this way to come here?
Commentary: Book Ten Spring Miscellaneous Poems 1813

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Spring Miscellaneous Poems"
Before the spring haze that rises over the cypress forest of Makimuku, the poet declares that it was no ordinary feeling that brought him here with such effort. The spring haze of the upper lines is both scenery and a device leading into "ōni," a word for something hazy and indistinct, so that landscape and heart are joined in one. It is a spring scene charged with strong attachment, and the object of that feeling may be read as the land of Makimuku itself or as someone who lives there.
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro was a court poet of the Asuka period, active under Empress Jitō and Emperor Monmu. The left note records that this poem comes from the Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Collection, and it is uncertain whether it is Hitomaro's own work or a poem by someone else that he recorded.

The first line, "Makimuku no," names Makimuku in Yamato, in present-day Sakurai, Nara. Lying along the north of Mount Miwa, it is a place often sung in the Hitomaro Collection.
The second line, "standing in the cypress forest," depicts haze rising among the cypresses. "Ru," the attributive form of the auxiliary "ri," expresses continuation, showing that the haze goes on standing there.
The third line, "spring haze," is a noun that gathers up the upper lines. The dim, blurred quality of spring haze serves as a preface leading into the next word, "ōni."
In the fourth line, "ōni shi omowaba," "ōni" means casually or half-heartedly and "shi" is an emphatic particle. "Ba" marks a supposition: if my feelings were merely ordinary.
In the last line, "nazumi kome ya mo," "nazumu" means to struggle or toil along, and "me ya mo" forms a rhetorical question. By insisting that no one would struggle so for a trivial feeling, the poet reveals the depth of his longing from the reverse side.
Author: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Source: Manyoshu
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