Kataoka ni shiba utsuri shite naku kigisu tatsu haoto tote takakaranu ka wa

片岡に柴移りして鳴く雉
立つ羽音とて高からぬかは

Roma-ji: Kataoka ni shiba utsuri shite naku kigisu tatsu haoto tote takakaranu ka wa
English Translation: On the little hill,
flitting through the brushwood, calls
the pheasant aloud:
would the sound of wings in flight
be any less high than that?
Meaning: On the hillside the pheasant calls as it moves from brush to brush. And the whirr of its wings as it takes flight, is that not loud as well?
Commentary: Spring Poems 34

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "On the pheasant"
This fourth poem closes the pheasant sequence. The pheasant moving through the brushwood on the hill not only calls loudly; the whirr of its wings as it takes off rings out loudly too.
In listening even to the sound of wings, not just the voice, one senses an eye that watches the creatures of hill and field at close hand. The sequence portrays the pheasant from many sides: its call, its waiting, the loss of its home, and the sound of its wings.

First line, “kataoka ni”: on a low hill.
Second line, “shiba utsuri shite”: moving from one clump of brushwood to the next.
Third line, “naku kigisu”: closing on a noun, the loud-voiced pheasant, with a break after the third line.
Fourth line, “tatsu haoto tote”: just because it is the sound of wings in flight.
Fifth line, “takakaranu ka wa”: ka wa is rhetorical, would it not be loud, indeed it is, closing with emphatic assertion.
Author: Saigyō
Source: Sankashu
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