Satsukiyama obotsukanaki o yūzukuyo kogakurete nomi shika ya matsuramu

五月山おぼつかなきを夕月夜
木隠れてのみ鹿や待つらむ

Roma-ji: Satsukiyama obotsukanaki o yūzukuyo kogakurete nomi shika ya matsuramu
English Translation: Fifth-month mountains
shrouded in uncertain dark—
under evening moon,
hidden only in the trees,
do they wait there for the deer?
Meaning: The fifth-month mountains are dim and uncertain—under the evening moon, do the hunters wait for the deer, hidden all the while among the trees?
Commentary: Summer Poems 165

Headnote: "Torch-hunting"
The poem sings of torch-hunting, in which hunters on summer nights lit fires in the mountains to lure deer and shoot them. In the dark, uncertain mountains of the fifth month, under the faint light of the evening moon, the poet imagines the hunters crouched among the trees, waiting on and on for the deer.
The Ruijū text places this poem among "poems found in another manuscript and in printed editions." In the source text consulted, a character at the end of line 3 could not be read, and it has been taken as yūzukuyo from the syllable count and the flow of the words.

Line 1 shares its opening with 157, referring to the leafy mountains of the fifth month.
Line 2, "though dim and uncertain," like "in the uncertainty" of 145, shows the darkness of a fifth-month night.
Line 3, yūzukuyo, is the moon out in the evening, or such a night.
Line 4, "only hidden among the trees," shows the hunters concealing themselves from their quarry. In 149 the hototogisu was hidden in the trees and unseen; here it is the one who waits who hides.
Line 5: ya is an interrogative binding particle concluded by the attributive of the present conjectural ramu.
Author: Minamoto no Sanetomo
Source: Kinkaishu
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