Nubatama no yo wa fukenurashi karigane no kikoyuru sora ni tsuki katabukinu

ぬばたまの夜は更けぬらし雁がねの
聞こゆる空に月傾きぬ

Roma-ji: Nubatama no yo wa fukenurashi karigane no kikoyuru sora ni tsuki katabukinu
English Translation: The pitch-black night
must have grown deep and late—
in the sky where cries
of the passing geese are heard
the moon has begun to sink.
Meaning: The night must have grown late—in the sky where the cries of the geese are heard, the moon has sunk low.
Commentary: Autumn Poems 230

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Geese before the moon"
Seeing the moon sink low in a sky where the cries of geese are heard, the poet knows that the night has grown late. Closing the sequence on geese before the moon, the poem portrays the quiet passage of time through the geese's late-night cries and the sinking moon.

Line 1, nubatama no, is a pillow word for "night."
Line 2: rashi is a grounded inference, judging from the moon's descent that the night has grown late; the poem pauses here.
Line 3, karigane, means the cry of geese, or the geese themselves.
Line 4 means "in the sky where they are heard."
Line 5 is the same last line as 201, with nu marking completion. In the sky the geese crossed on a clear moonlit night in the preceding poem, 229, the moon now sinks, so the five poems on geese before the moon close with its descent.
Author: Minamoto no Sanetomo
Source: Kinkaishu
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