Mirume karu kata ya izuku zo sao sashite ware ni oshie yo ama no tsuribune - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

みるめ刈るかたやいづくぞ棹さして
我に教へよ海人の釣舟

Roma-ji: Mirume karu kata ya izuku zo sao sashite ware ni oshie yo ama no tsuribune
English Translation: Where the seaweed's reaped,
what shore is it, and just where?
Pole your boat and come,
teach the way to me, I pray,
O fishing boat of the divers
Meaning: Where is the shore where that seaweed is reaped? Pole your boat this way and tell me, O fishing boat of the divers.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems I 1080

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the third poem of the sequence on love sung through seaweed, and the closing poem of Love Poems I. Asking where the seaweed is reaped, the poet calls on the fishing boat of the divers to pole its way over and show him. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author, "Narihira Ason," is Ariwara no Narihira. A son of Prince Abo, himself a son of Emperor Heizei, he is counted among the Six Poetic Immortals and has long been taken as the hero of The Tales of Ise.

In the first line, "mirume" pivots, as in the two poems before, between the seaweed and the chance to see the beloved.
In the second line, "kata" pivots, as in the preceding poem, between the tidal flat where seaweed is reaped and a place or direction. The question particle "ya" is answered by "izuku," and the poem breaks here.
The third line, "sao sashite," means "driving the pole into the bottom to move the boat along."
The fourth line, "ware ni oshie yo," is an imperative, "teach me," and like "shirube se yo" in 1074 it calls out to ask the way.
The last line, "ama no tsuribune," ends on a noun. The book closes by asking the divers for the way to a meeting; where 990, the opening poem, lamented that love might end with only gazing from afar at white clouds on a peak, this closing poem ends by asking for the means of seeing itself. Beginning with a love that only looks on from afar and ending with a love that asks the way to see, Love Poems I comes to a close.
Author: Ariwara no Narihira
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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