Izukata no kumoji to shiraba tazunemashi tsura hanareken kari ga yukue o - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

いづかたの雲路と知らば尋ねまし
列離れけん雁がゆくへを

Roma-ji: Izukata no kumoji to shiraba tazunemashi tsura hanareken kari ga yukue o
English Translation: If I only knew
which of the cloud paths it took,
I would go and search
for the wild goose that is gone
astray from its line
Meaning: If only I knew which cloud path it had taken, I would go and seek out where it has gone, that wild goose that strayed from its line.
Commentary: Book Nine Poems of Lament 564

Headnote: "Sent when the parents and siblings of someone who had gone to a distant place and died there came back to the capital and spoke of their sorrow"
Sent when someone who had gone down to a distant province died, and the parents and siblings returned to the capital and spoke of their grief. If I knew which cloud path it was, I would go and seek it, the poet says, the wild goose that left its line. Likening the one who set out with the family but died alone far away to a goose that has left its line, she shares the bereaved family's sorrow through her wish to seek where the soul has gone.
The author, "Murasaki Shikibu," was the daughter of Fujiwara no Tametoki, Governor of Echizen. She served Shōshi, consort of Emperor Ichijō, and wrote The Tale of Genji and The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu. She is one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals of the Middle Ages and has a poem in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu.

First line, "izukata no": "in which direction."
Second line, "kumoji to shiraba": "kumoji" is the road through the sky that geese fly. "Shira" is the irrealis, and with "ba" forms a hypothetical, "if I knew."
Third line, "tazunemashi": the counterfactual "mashi," "I would go and search." The poem pauses here.
Fourth line, "tsura hanareken": "tsura" is the line of geese, standing for the family. "Ken" is the attributive of the past conjectural, "that must have left its line."
Fifth line, "kari ga yukue o": likening the dead to a wild goose, it speaks of where the soul has gone, returning by inversion to "tazunemashi" in the third line.
Author: Murasaki Shikibu
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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