Ima komu to iite wakareshi hito nareba kagiri to kikedo nao zo mataruru

English Translation

He was the one who
said he would come back at once
and so, though I hear
that all is over with him
still I find myself waiting

Meaning

He was the one who said he would be back at once. And so, though I hear that it is all over with him, I still find myself waiting.

Commentary

55 Still I Find Myself Waiting

A man left the woman who loved him and went off to another province, and while she was waiting to hear when he would return, word came that he had died; and she composed this poem. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
Of neither the man nor the woman does the prose give a name or a rank. The fifty-fourth section gives a man's poem saying he will not return to the capital, and this one is placed to give the poem of a woman left behind.
Neither time nor place is given. All we are told is that he went and that news of his death came.
What prompted the poem was that news.
The section ends there; nothing further is recorded. The poem was later included in the Shokugoshūi-shū.

The first line quotes what he said as he left: that he would come back at once.
The grammar that follows makes this the reason for everything after: because he was a man who said that.
What she has heard is put as an end, a last limit, rather than as a death; the concessive carries past it: though she hears it.
The final verb is in the spontaneous voice — she waits without meaning to, and cannot help it, with an emphatic particle governing the form. That one grammatical choice carries the whole of a mind that knows he is dead and goes on waiting anyway.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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