Yū sareba kiri tachikurashi ogurayama yama no tokage ni shika zo nakunaru

夕されば霧立ちくらし小倉山
山のとかげに鹿ぞ鳴くなる

Roma-ji: Yū sareba kiri tachikurashi ogurayama yama no tokage ni shika zo nakunaru
English Translation: When the evening comes,
mist rises up and darkens
Mount Ogura,
and in the mountain's shadows
I can hear a stag cry out.
Meaning: When evening comes, the mist rises and darkens Mount Ogura, and in the shadows of the mountain I hear a stag cry.
Commentary: Autumn Poems 236

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Poems on deer"
At evening, the poet hears a stag crying in the shadows of Mount Ogura, where rising mist darkens all around. He portrays the loneliness of an autumn dusk through the stag's cry resounding in the dark.
This poem was included in the Shinsenzai Wakashū. The ogura of "Mount Ogura" suggests ogurashi, "dim," echoing the mountain darkened by mist.

Line 1 shares its opening with 223 and others, calling up an evening scene.
Line 2 means "the mist rises and darkens all around." The evening mist the preceding poem, 235, only guessed at here rises and fills the mountain.
Line 3 is the same mountain as line 3 of the preceding poem, so the two share a setting, and the sound ogura echoes kurashi in line 2.
Line 4, "in the mountain's shadow," like "the mountain's evening mist" in line 4 of the preceding poem, repeats the "mountain" of line 3.
Line 5 concludes the binding particle zo with naru, inferring from sound, and is the same as line 2 of the preceding poem.
Author: Minamoto no Sanetomo
Source: Kinkaishu
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