Yamagoto ni sabishikaraji to hagemu beshi keburi kometari Ono no yamazato

山ごとに寂しからじと励むべし
煙こめたり小野の山里

Roma-ji: Yamagoto ni sabishikaraji to hagemu beshi keburi kometari Ono no yamazato
English Translation: On every mountain
'we shall not be lonely here,'
they toil, so it seems:
smoke hangs thick and everywhere
in the mountain village of Ono.
Meaning: On every mountain they must be working hard, determined not to be lonely; the smoke hangs thick over the mountain village of Ono.
Commentary: Winter Poems 566

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Ten winter poems"
This is the tenth and last of the sequence of ten winter poems. In the mountain village of Ono, known for burning charcoal, people on every mountain must be hard at work, determined that they shall not be lonely, and the smoke of the kilns hangs thick everywhere. The sequence, which has sung of loneliness again and again, closes with the smoke of human labor.
Poem 547 in this book also tells of the smoke of charcoal kilns, so this feature of winter in mountain villages appears in two poems. And where 557, the first of the sequence, opened with the loneliness of a mountain village, this tenth poem closes it with signs of human work that seem to say it is not lonely, so the beginning and end of the sequence answer each other.

First line, “yamagoto ni”: goto ni means on every one, on every mountain.
Second line, “sabishikaraji to”: ji is negative conjecture, it will not be lonely.
Third line, “hagemu beshi”: hagemu is to work hard and beshi an auxiliary of conjecture, they must be working hard; the poem breaks after the third line.
Fourth line, “keburi kometari”: komu is to fill or hang thick, and tari is continuative, the smoke of charcoal burning hanging over all; the poem breaks here too.
Fifth line, “Ono no yamazato”: Ono is a place in Yamashiro known as a village of charcoal burners; the poem ends on a noun, closing the sequence.
Author: Saigyō
Source: Sankashu
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