Yo o nokosu nezame ni kiku zo aware naru Yumeno no shika mo kaku ya nakuran

夜を残す寝覚めに聞くぞあはれなる
夢野の鹿もかくや鳴くらん

Roma-ji: Yo o nokosu nezame ni kiku zo aware naru Yumeno no shika mo kaku ya nakuran
English Translation: With some night still left,
waking up I hear it call,
how it moves my heart:
did the deer of Yumeno
cry out just this way, I wonder?
Meaning: How moving it is to hear the deer call when I wake while night still lingers; did the deer of Yumeno, the Moor of Dreams, cry like this?
Commentary: Autumn Poems 437

Headnote: "Deer at daybreak"
The topic is the deer calling at daybreak. The call of a deer heard on waking before the night has fully ended sinks deep into the heart; did the deer of Yumeno cry like this? From the deer's call heard on waking at dawn, the poet's thoughts fly to an old legend of dreams and deer.
The deer of Yumeno appears in a surviving fragment of the Settsu Fudoki: a stag living on the moor of Yumeno told his mate a dream, which she read as an ill omen, and just so he was shot and killed. The dream of waking calls up the deer of Yumeno.

First line, “yo o nokosu”: with night still remaining, before full daybreak.
Second line, “nezame ni kiku zo”: what is heard on waking, with zo forming a kakari-musubi with naru in the third line.
Third line, “aware naru”: the attributive answering zo, deeply moving; the poem breaks after the third line.
Fourth line, “Yumeno no shika mo”: Yumeno is a place in Settsu known for a legend of a deer and a dream, linked with nezame in the second line.
Fifth line, “kaku ya nakuran”: ya is a question particle and ran present conjecture, did it cry like this.
Author: Saigyō
Source: Sankashu
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