Waga tanomu Hiyoshi no kage wa okuyama no shiba no to made mo sasazarame ya wa - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

わが頼む日吉の影は奥山の
柴の戸までもささざらめやは

Roma-ji: Waga tanomu Hiyoshi no kage wa okuyama no shiba no to made mo sasazarame ya wa
English Translation: The light of Hiyoshi,
the god in whom I put my trust,
how could it fail
to shine even to the door
of brushwood deep in the hills?
Meaning: The light of Hiyoshi, the god I trust, how could it fail to shine even on my brushwood door deep in the mountains? Surely it will.
Commentary: Book Twenty Shinto Poems 1275

Headnote: "Composed among poems of personal grievance"
He composed this among poems of personal grievance. Could the light of Hiyoshi that I trust fail to reach even the brushwood door deep in the hills? he says. The Hiyoshi Shrine enshrines the guardian god of Mount Hiei and was held to protect the Tendai school. A monk of Mount Hiei, he trusts deeply that the blessed light of the Hiyoshi god will surely reach even one secluded in a rough hut in the mountains.
The author, "Hōin Jien," was a son of the Regent Fujiwara no Tadamichi and a younger brother of Kujō Kanezane. He later served four times as head of the Tendai school and wrote the historical work Gukanshō. His personal collection is the Shūgyokushū.
Poems on the Hiyoshi Shrine continue from here, and the next poems, 1276 and 1277, also sing of the god of Hiyoshi. The fifth line of 1279 in this book, "harezarame ya wa," takes the same rhetorical form as this poem's fifth line, "sasazarame ya wa."

First line, "waga tanomu": "in whom I trust."
Second line, "Hiyoshi no kage wa": Hiyoshi is the shrine at Sakamoto in Ōmi, and the "hi," sun, in its name runs on to "kage," light, as an associated word.
Third line, "okuyama no": "of the remote, deep mountains," calling to mind the heart of Mount Hiei.
Fourth line, "shiba no to made mo": "shiba no to" is a rough door of brushwood, meaning a hut in the hills.
Fifth line, "sasazarame ya wa": "sasu" means light shining in, "zara" is negative, "me" the perfective form of the conjectural "mu," and "ya wa" rhetorical: "how could it fail to shine? It surely will." It has the same form as "harezarame ya wa" in the fifth line of 1279 in this book.
Author: Jien
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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