Yoiyoi ni kimi o aware to omoitsutsu hito ni wa iwade ne o nomi zo naku - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

宵々に君をあはれと思ひつつ
人には言はで音をのみぞ泣く

Roma-ji: Yoiyoi ni kimi o aware to omoitsutsu hito ni wa iwade ne o nomi zo naku
English Translation: Night after night now
thinking of you tenderly,
I go on and on;
never telling anyone,
I can only weep aloud.
Meaning: Night after night I think of you with tender longing, yet I tell no one, and can only weep aloud.
Commentary: Book Fourteen Love Poems IV 1234

Headnote: "Sent to a woman when he was a middle captain."
This poem opens Book Fourteen and is the first of a sequence of love exchanges. The speaker thinks tenderly of the beloved night after night, tells no one, and only weeps aloud. According to the headnote, it was sent to a woman while the author was a middle captain of the Palace Guards.
The author, "Lord Seishin," is Fujiwara no Saneyori. The eldest son of the Chancellor Fujiwara no Tadahira, he served in turn as chancellor, grand minister, and regent, and was called the Lord of Ononomiya. Seishin is the posthumous title given to him.
The woman answers this poem in the next poem, 1235.

The first line, "yoiyoi ni," means "night after night." It shows that the longing returns not on a single night but every night. The third line of the next poem, "yoiyoi o," takes up this very word.
In the second line, "aware" is the feeling of tender love for the other person. The line names both the beloved and the feeling plainly.
In the third line, "omoitsutsu," the particle "tsutsu" expresses repetition and continuation, echoing "night after night" in the first line.
In the fourth line, "hito ni wa iwade," the ending "-de" is negative: "without telling." It shows the figure of a lover who keeps love hidden.
The last line, "ne o nomi zo naku," means "I can only weep aloud." With the emphatic particle "zo," the verb takes the attributive form. The poem closes on the contrast between words that cannot be spoken and a voice that overflows in weeping, a fitting opening for a book centered on the grief of love.
Author: Fujiwara no Saneyori
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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