Ama no hara furisakemireba masukagami kiyoki tsukuyo ni kari nakiwataru

天の原ふり放け見ればます鏡
清き月夜に雁鳴きわたる

Roma-ji: Ama no hara furisakemireba masukagami kiyoki tsukuyo ni kari nakiwataru
English Translation: Across the heavens
as I raise my eyes to gaze,
like a polished mirror,
in the clear and moonlit night,
wild geese cry as they pass by.
Meaning: When I lift my eyes to the heavens, across the moonlit night clear as a polished mirror the wild geese fly, crying.
Commentary: Autumn Poems 229

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Geese before the moon"
Looking up into the vast sky, the poet sees geese crossing, crying, a moonlit night as clear as a polished mirror. In a broad, Man'yō-like cadence, he portrays the pairing of moon and geese as a scene of a pure night sky.
Kamo no Mabuchi gave it a double circle. The upper lines open with the same words as Abe no Nakamaro's Kokin Wakashū poem gazing up at the moon over Mount Mikasa. In the source text this poem's number is misprinted, but by its place in the sequence it is 229.

Line 1, ama no hara, means the vast sky; 200 and 271 open with the same words.
Line 2 means "when I look up far off." Poem 271 opens with the same two lines, so the two both sing of the moon in the night sky.
Line 3, masukagami, a well-polished mirror, is a pillow word for "clear."
Line 4 means "on a clear, pure moonlit night."
Line 5 means the geese cross the sky crying, ending in the conclusive form. It shares the word nakiwataru with the opening of 227, running through the sequence on geese before the moon.
Author: Minamoto no Sanetomo
Source: Kinkaishu
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