Somabito no kure ni yado karu kokochi shite iori o tataku kuina narikeri

杣人の暮れに宿借る心地して
庵を叩く水鶏なりけり

Roma-ji: Somabito no kure ni yado karu kokochi shite iori o tataku kuina narikeri
English Translation: As if a woodsman,
come at dusk to beg a lodging,
so it seemed to me,
knocking on my hermitage:
it was a water rail that called.
Meaning: It sounded like a woodsman knocking at dusk to ask for a night's lodging, but the one tapping at my hermitage was a water rail.
Commentary: Summer Poems 232

Headnote: "The water rail deep in the mountains"
This poem was composed on the topic of the water rail deep in the mountains. At his hermitage in the mountains the poet heard a knocking at dusk and thought a woodsman had come to ask for a night's shelter, but it was the call of a water rail. The rail's cry was likened to knocking on a door, and the poet moves this old comparison to a hermitage in the hills.
In the capital the rail's cry was mistaken for a lover's knock; here deep in the mountains it is mistaken for the visit of a woodsman, a twist that suits life in the hills.

First line, “somabito no”: somabito is one who fells timber in the mountains, a woodsman.
Second line, “kure ni yado karu”: borrowing a night's lodging at dusk.
Third line, “kokochi shite”: feeling as if that were so.
Fourth line, “iori o tataku”: knocking at the door of the hermitage, drawing on the idea that the rail's call sounds like knocking.
Fifth line, “kuina narikeri”: narikeri expresses the realization that it was a water rail.
Author: Saigyō
Source: Sankashu
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