Tsunosawau iware no yama ni shirotae ni kakareru kumo wa ōkimi ni kamo

つのさはふ磐余の山に白栲に
かかれる雲は大君にかも

Roma-ji: Tsunosawau iware no yama ni shirotae ni kakareru kumo wa ōkimi ni kamo
English Translation: On Iware’s hill,
the mount of thick-set stones,
like white mulberry cloth
the clouds that hang there—
can they be you, my prince?
Meaning: The clouds that hang like white cloth on the hill of Iware—could they be my departed prince?
Commentary: Book Thirteen Elegies 3325

Headnote: "Envoy"
This is the envoy to the chōka (3324). In the white clouds hanging over Iware, where the prince was buried, the poet finds the image of the dead prince. The chōka is an elegy by an attendant who served the prince at the Fujiwara capital: recalling the days when the prince climbed the hill of Uetsuki to view the land in spring, admired bush clover in autumn and sported with a catalpa bow in winter, it mourns burying him while gazing on Iware from the road of Kinohe. One theory holds that the prince is Takechi. The envoy rests on the ancient belief that saw in clouds the form of a departed soul.
The poet is unknown. Book Thirteen is built mainly of anonymous chōka and their envoys, and many of its poems preserve the air of old songs and ritual verse.

The first line, “tsunosawau,” is a pillow word for Iware whose meaning is unknown.
In the second line, “Iware” is a place in western present-day Sakurai, Nara, taking up the chōka’s “gazing on Iware.”
In the third line, “shirotae” is white cloth woven from mulberry fiber, a figure for the whiteness of the cloud; it also echoes the chōka’s draping of the mortuary palace in white cloth.
The fourth line, “kakareru kumo wa,” means “the clouds that hang,” with “ru” the attributive of the stative “ri.”
The closing line, “ōkimi ni kamo,” means “might it be my prince,” the particle “ka” with a sighing “mo,” its predicate left unsaid so that the feeling lingers.
Source: Manyoshu
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