Hitodama no saonaru kimi ga tada hitori aerishi amayo no hahisa shi omōyu

人魂のさ青なる君がただひとり
逢へりし雨夜の葉非左し思ほゆ

Roma-ji: Hitodama no saonaru kimi ga tada hitori aerishi amayo no hahisa shi omōyu
English Translation: Pale as a soul-fire,
the blue-white face of you,
whom all alone
I met upon a rainy night—
that hahisa comes to mind.
Meaning: I keep remembering that rainy night when, all alone, I met you, pale blue as a soul-fire—that hahisa of the night comes back to me.
Commentary: Book Sixteen Poems with Tales of Origin and Miscellaneous Poems 3889

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Three poems on fearsome things."
The poet recalls a rainy night when he met someone pale blue like a soul-fire, all alone. It quietly looks back on the terror of encountering a ghostly figure on a wet night. It is the last poem of Book Sixteen.
The three "poems on fearsome things" form a set on the terrors of other worlds—a field in heaven, a land beyond the sea, a soul-fire—and are placed at the end of Book Sixteen. They may have been recited at banquets to give the company a fright. The word hahisa at the end of the fourth line has no settled reading; it is provisionally read here by the sounds of its characters.
The poet is not recorded.

First line, "hitodama no," means "like a soul-fire," a spirit believed to leave the body and glow pale blue. Where the book opened with poem 3786 mourning a maiden's death, it closes with a poem of a soul-fire, so poems on life and death answer each other at the book's beginning and end.
Second line, "saonaru kimi ga," means "you, deathly pale." Sa is a prefix, describing a figure blanched like a soul-fire.
Third line, "tada hitori," means "all alone," heightening the helplessness of facing such a being by oneself.
Fourth line, "aerishi amayo no," means "of the rainy night we met." Hypermetric at eight syllables, it sets the eerie scene of a rainy night.
Final line, "hahisa shi omōyu," means "that hahisa comes to mind." Hahisa is an unreadable word of uncertain meaning, shi is emphatic, and omōyu means to come to mind unbidden. Leaving that riddle unsolved, Book Sixteen comes to its close.
Source: Manyoshu
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