classic waka stream

My love is a log
laid across a narrow stream
for a bridge: it turns
underfoot and sends me down,
and my sleeves come up wet through

Meaning
My love is a single log laid across a narrow stream for a bridge: it turns underfoot and sends me down, and my sleeves come up soaked.
Commentary
Volume Nine: Kozaishō

　Michimori of the Third Rank fell in love with a lady called Kozaishō who served the retired Empress Jōsaimon-in. He wrote and wrote, and from her came nothing at all. Still he would not give it up, writing again and again and putting all he felt into poems, and this went on for three years, and she would not so much as take up a letter.
　At last even Michimori began to see how hopeless it was. If she will not answer this either, he thought, there is nothing for it—and gave a final letter to his messenger. The man, unable to find the lady who usually carried the letters in, was slinking away when Kozaishō's carriage came in at the gate. Thinking of Michimori waiting in misery, he took his chance, made as if to pass by, and dropped the letter through the blinds of the carriage.
　She opened it: Michimori again. On her way in to the palace there was nowhere to put it, so she tucked it into the waist of her trousers and went to her duties. Busy with this and that she forgot it—and let it fall, of all places, before the empress. The empress, who had seen perfectly well where it came from, said with amusement that she had found something unusual, and whose might it be? Among ladies who all said they knew nothing, only Kozaishō sat scarlet with her head down.
　The empress had privately known for some time of Michimori's long attachment, and being curious she opened the letter herself. Heavy with incense, written in a remarkable hand, it said at length that he had never met so obstinate a woman, and that this only fed his feeling the more; and at the end stood this poem.

　The maroki hashi is a single log thrown across a narrow ravine stream—a bridge with nothing to hold to. He makes it his love.
　Fumikaesarete carries both "trodden and turned over" and "my letters sent back." A log bridge rolls under the foot and drops whoever tries to cross. He, whose letters keep coming back, has fallen the same way and is wet through.
　"Sleeves come up wet" is both the water and his tears, so that the ravine scene runs straight into weeping. Bridge, stream, treading, wetness—within a single image, three years of courtship, its refusal, and the tears are said entire.
　And it was the empress's reading of it that changed things. A feeling that had failed for three years arrives by being read not by its object but by a third party. As an instance of a poem moving people, the route it takes is unusual even in this tale.

waga koi……my love.
hoso-tanigawa……a narrow ravine stream.
maroki hashi……a bridge of a single log.
fumikaesarete……trodden and turned over; punning on letters returned.
nururu sode……sleeves wet with tears.
Michimori……Taira no Michimori, son of Norimori.
Jōsaimon-in……Princess Toshiko, elder sister of Go-Shirakawa.
Mon-in……Kenreimon-in Tokuko.
nashi no tsubute……a message that gets no reply.
sandai……to go up to the palace.
Source
Heike Monogatari
Other