Hakarumeru koto no yoki nomi ōkereba soranageki oba koru ni ya aruramu - Kinyo Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

はかるめることのよきのみ多かれば
そらなげきをばこるにやあるらむ

Roma-ji: Hakarumeru koto no yoki nomi ōkereba soranageki oba koru ni ya aruramu
English Translation: Since in all you say
the skill of an axe abounds,
so fine your deceits,
are you, I wonder, chopping
empty grief like wood to burn
Meaning: Since your words are so full of fine and cunning skill, like an axe, I wonder whether you are not chopping out false grief like firewood.
Commentary: Book Eight Love Poems II 499

Since the other is so full of smooth and deceiving words, the poet wonders whether those laments are not false grief, cut out like firewood with an axe. Punning on yoki, the old word for axe and good, and on nageki, grief and firewood, and stringing koru, to cut wood, as a related word, the poem doubts the truth of the other's words.
Following poems 494 and 498 in this book, it closes the sequence that sings of love's grief in the language of firewood.

First line, 'hakarumeru', means that seem to deceive, hakaru meaning to trick. It uses meru, the attributive of the inferential meri.
Second line, 'koto no yoki nomi', is a pivot word in which yoki means both fine words and yoki, an old word for an axe, left in kana.
Third line, 'ōkereba', means since there are many.
Fourth line, 'soranageki oba', is a pivot word in which nageki means both grief and wood cut for fuel, left in kana. Soranageki means false grief.
Final line, 'koru ni ya aruramu', uses koru, to cut wood, related to yoki in the second line and nageki in the fourth. The particle ya with the attributive of the conjectural ramu expresses a question.
Author: Unknown Poet
Source: Kinyo Wakashu
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