Kimi dani mo omoiidekeru yoiyoi o matsu wa ikanaru kokochi ka wa suru - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

君だにも思ひ出でける宵々を
待つはいかなる心地かはする

Roma-ji: Kimi dani mo omoiidekeru yoiyoi o matsu wa ikanaru kokochi ka wa suru
English Translation: If even you, love,
call to mind those nights on nights,
those same nights on nights,
how do you think it must feel
for one who waits all through them?
Meaning: If even you remembered me on those nights, one after another, what do you suppose it feels like for me, who spends them all in waiting?
Commentary: Book Fourteen Love Poems IV 1235

Headnote: "Reply."
This is the second poem of the sequence of love exchanges, a reply to the preceding poem. The speaker asks in return: if even you remembered me on those nights, how do you think I feel, waiting through them? The headnote says only "Reply," and this is the answer of the woman who received the preceding poem.
The author is given as "Anonymous," and her name has not come down to us. She is the woman to whom Fujiwara no Saneyori sent the preceding poem.

In the first line, "kimi dani mo," the particle "dani" names a lesser thing to suggest a greater one: "even you." The man who merely thinks is placed on the lighter side, bringing out the weight borne by the woman who waits.
The second line, "omoiidekeru," answers "omoitsutsu" in the third line of the preceding poem. What the man called thinking of her constantly, she receives as merely remembering her.
The third line, "yoiyoi o," takes up "yoiyoi ni," the first line of the preceding poem. The same nights are, for the man, nights of longing and, for the woman, nights of waiting.
The fourth line, "matsu wa ikanaru," states the position of the one who waits. To the man's "weeping," the woman answers with "waiting," reversing the roles of the one who longs and the one who waits.
In the last line, "kokochi ka wa suru," the particles "ka wa" express a question verging on the rhetorical: "how do you think it feels?" It carries the sense that the pain of waiting far exceeds the man's weeping.
Author: Unknown Poet
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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