Karigane wa kaeru michi ni ya mayouran Koshi no Nakayama kasumi hedatete

雁がねは帰る道にや迷ふらん
越の中山霞隔てて

Roma-ji: Karigane wa kaeru michi ni ya mayouran Koshi no Nakayama kasumi hedatete
English Translation: The wild geese, I wonder,
on their journey going home,
have they lost their way?
Over Koshi's Nakayama
the haze stands between them now.
Meaning: Are the wild geese losing their way as they fly home? For the haze has screened off Nakayama in the land of Koshi.
Commentary: Spring Poems 47

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Wild geese returning through the haze"
This is the second poem on geese returning through the haze. The poet worries that the geese flying back to Koshi in the north may lose their way, since Nakayama, the mountain on their route, is hidden behind the haze.
The unease the poet felt in the preceding poem at the geese vanishing into the haze becomes here a tender concern for geese losing their way because of it. The way haze screens things off is seen as something barring the geese's road home.

First line, “karigane wa”: singling out the geese returning north.
Second line, “kaeru michi ni ya”: the interrogative ya forms a kakari-musubi with ran in the third line.
Third line, “mayouran”: are they lost, closing with the conjectural ran, with a break after the third line.
Fourth line, “Koshi no Nakayama”: a mountain on the road to the land of Koshi in the north.
Fifth line, “kasumi hedatete”: with the haze screening it off, giving in inverted order the reason the geese may lose their way.
Author: Saigyō
Source: Sankashu
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