Miwa no yama shirushi no sugi wa arinagara oshieshi hito wa nakute ikuyo zo - Shui Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

三輪の山しるしの杉はありながら
教へし人はなくて幾世ぞ

Roma-ji: Miwa no yama shirushi no sugi wa arinagara oshieshi hito wa nakute ikuyo zo
English Translation: On Miwa Mountain
the cedar standing as a sign
is there even now,
but the one who told of it is gone—
how many ages has it been?
Meaning: On Mount Miwa the cedar that served as a sign still stands, but the one who told of it is gone—how many ages have passed since then?
Commentary: Book Eight Miscellaneous Poems I 486

Headnote: "On seeing Mount Miwa on the road to Hatsuse"
The poet says that although the cedar that served as a sign still stands on Mount Miwa, the one who told of it has been gone for ages. The headnote shows he composed it on seeing Mount Miwa on the road to Hatsuse. Drawing on the Kokinshū poem that invites a lover to visit a hut at the foot of Mount Miwa with a cedar by its gate, he laments that the cedar remains unchanged while the one who pointed to it departed long ago. Following the preceding poem, 484, it sings of the road to Hatsuse, and it leads on to the cypress grove of Miwa in 491 of this book.
The author, written as Motosuke, is Kiyohara no Motosuke. A grandson of Kiyohara no Fukayabu, he was one of the Five Men of the Pear Chamber who compiled the Gosenshū and worked on reading the Man'yōshū. The father of Sei Shōnagon, he is counted among the Thirty-Six Immortal Poets.

First line, "Miwa no yama," means "Mount Miwa" in Yamato, and the poem breaks here.
Second line, "shirushi no sugi wa," means "the cedar that is a sign," pointing to the cedar made a marker of the house in the Kokinshū poem.
Third line, "arinagara," means "though it remains." The third line of 479 in this book is the same "arinagara."
Fourth line, "oshieshi hito wa," means "the one who told of it," the speaker of the old poem who gave the cedar as a sign, with "shi" the attributive form of the past auxiliary "ki."
Final line, "nakute ikuyo zo," means "how many ages since they are gone," with "zo" expressing emphasis. It closes on the contrast of an unchanging cedar and a departed person.
Author: Kiyohara no Motosuke
Source: Shui Wakashu
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