Omoitsutsu nureba ya hito no mietsuramu yume to shiriseba samezaramashi o - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

思ひつつ寝ればや人の見えつらむ
夢と知りせば覚めざらましを

Roma-ji: Omoitsutsu nureba ya hito no mietsuramu yume to shiriseba samezaramashi o
English Translation: Was it because I
fell asleep thinking of him
that he came to me?
Had I known it was a dream,
I would never have awakened.
Meaning: Was it because I fell asleep thinking of him that he appeared to me? Had I known it was only a dream, I would never have woken up.
Commentary: Book Twelve Love Poems II 552

Headnote: "Topic unknown"
The poet wonders whether her beloved appeared to her because she fell asleep longing for him, and laments that, had she known it was a dream, she would not have awakened. The joy of meeting in a dream someone she cannot meet in waking life and the regret of waking are layered together. The counterfactual in the final lines conveys a sense of something that can never be recovered. Renowned as the most representative of Komachi's dream poems, it forms a sequence of three with the poems that follow and opens Book Twelve.
Ono no Komachi was a poet of the early Heian period, counted among the Six Poetic Immortals and the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals. She is said to have served at court around the reign of Emperor Ninmyō, but much about her origins and life is uncertain. One theory makes her the daughter of Ono no Yoshizane, a district official of Dewa.

First line, "omoitsutsu": the particle tsutsu expresses continuing action, meaning "while thinking of him." Opening with the moment of falling asleep echoes the first line of the next poem, 553, "utatane ni."
Second line, "nureba ya hito no": nureba is a perfective form with ba, a statement of cause, "because I slept." Ya is an interrogative binding particle that pairs with ramu in the third line. Hito refers to the beloved.
Third line, "mietsuramu": miyu means to appear in a dream; tsu marks completion and ramu conjectures a cause, taking the attributive form as the resolution of ya. The poem breaks here, after the third line.
Fourth line, "yume to shiriseba": se is regarded as the conditional form of the past auxiliary ki, and together with mashi in the final line it forms a counterfactual construction.
Fifth line, "samezaramashi o": mashi expresses the counterfactual, and the closing o carries an exclamatory tone, leaving the lingering regret of wishing she had not awakened. The book opens with a dream poem, and dreams return near its end in 608 and 609, so the theme runs through the whole book.
Author: Ono no Komachi
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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