Koishiki ni wabite tamashii mayoinaba munashiki kara no na ni ya nokoramu - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

恋しきにわびて魂迷ひなば
むなしき殻の名にや残らむ

Roma-ji: Koishiki ni wabite tamashii mayoinaba munashiki kara no na ni ya nokoramu
English Translation: If, grieving with love,
my soul should wander away,
would it be only
as an empty husk that
my name remains behind?
Meaning: If, tormented by longing, my soul should leave my body and wander away, would I be remembered only by the name of an empty shell?
Commentary: Book Twelve Love Poems II 571

Headnote: "A poem from the poetry contest held at the residence of the Empress in the Kanpyō era"
The poet wonders whether, if his soul, tormented by longing, should leave his body and wander off, what remains would keep its name only as an empty, soulless shell. Drawing on the belief of the time that the soul leaves the body when feelings reach their height, it expresses a torment of love close to death. It was composed for the Kanpyō-era Empress's poetry contest and is placed within the run of poems from that contest.
The author is anonymous, and the name has not come down to us.

First line, "koishiki ni": koishiki means longing, and ni marks the cause, "because of longing."
Second line, "wabite tamashii": wabu means to be troubled. Tamashii is the soul dwelling in the body, which was thought to leave it and wander when feelings reached their height.
Third line, "mayoinaba": na is the conditional form of the completion auxiliary nu, and with the hypothetical ba it means "if it should wander away." Whereas the previous poem, 570, wished to send the heart somewhere, this poem imagines the soul leaving on its own, so the two poems echo each other.
Fourth line, "munashiki kara no": munashiki kara is the body from which the soul has gone, an empty shell.
Fifth line, "na ni ya nokoramu": ya is an interrogative binding particle, and mu attached to nokora takes the attributive form as its resolution. The poem closes by imagining his own fate: will only the name of an empty shell remain?
Author: Unknown Poet
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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