classic waka stream

憂きながら人をばえしも忘れねば
かつ恨みつつなほぞ恋しき
Roma-ji

Uki nagara hito o ba e shimo wasureneba katsu uramitsutsu nao zo koishiki

English Translation
Painful though it is,
I can never, not at all,
forget that person;
so even while I resent,
I find I long for him still
Meaning
Painful as it is, I simply cannot forget him; so, even as I resent him, I still long for him.
Commentary
Book Fifteen Love Poems V 1363

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the second poem of the sequence on cruelty and forgetting. Though pained, the speaker cannot forget the beloved, and longs for him even while resenting him. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author, "Anonymous," indicates a poet whose name has not come down.

The first line, "uki nagara," means "painful though it is."
In the second line, "hito o ba e shimo," "e" answers the negative below to mean "cannot possibly." "Shi" and "mo" are intensifiers.
The third line, "wasureneba," means "since I do not forget." Where the preceding poem feared being forgotten, this one says it is the speaker who cannot forget, so that the one who forgets and the one who cannot forget face each other.
In the fourth line, "katsu uramitsutsu," "katsu" means "on the one hand." Resentment and longing exist at once.
The last line, "nao zo koishiki," closes the kakari-musubi of "zo" with the attributive "koishiki." It ends in the same form, "zo" with an attributive adjective, as "mono zo kanashiki," the last line of the preceding poem.
Author
Unknown Poet
Source
Shin Kokin Wakashu
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