Te mo furede tsukihi henikeru shiramayumi okifushi yoru wa i koso nerarene - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

手もふれで月日経にける白真弓
おきふし夜はいこそ寝られね

Roma-ji: Te mo furede tsukihi henikeru shiramayumi okifushi yoru wa i koso nerarene
English Translation: Like a white birch bow
untouched by hand while months and
days go slipping by,
laid down, set up, I rise and lie,
and cannot sleep at all the night.
Meaning: Like a bow of white spindlewood left untouched as the months and days go by, laid down and set aside, I rise and lie down again and cannot sleep through the night.
Commentary: Book Twelve Love Poems II 605

Headnote: "Topic unknown"
The poet says that, just as a bow of white wood left untouched for months is laid down and set aside, he too rises and lies down again and cannot sleep at night. The upper verse's image of the bow serves as a preface, and okifushi carries both "laying down" a bow and a person "rising and lying down." The untouched bow is overlaid with a beloved with whom he has not yet been able to share a bond, expressing the pain of a love in which months pass without meeting.
Ki no Tsurayuki was a poet of the early Heian period, the son of Ki no Mochiyuki. He was the leading compiler of the Kokinshū and wrote its Japanese preface. He served as Governor of Tosa and is also known as the author of the Tosa Diary. He is one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals.

First line, "te mo furede": de is a negative conjunctive particle, "without even touching it." It hints at a beloved with whom no bond has yet been formed.
Second line, "tsukihi henikeru": ni marks completion and keru is the attributive of the past auxiliary keri, "months and days have passed."
Third line, "shiramayumi": shiramayumi is a bow of unfinished white wood made from spindlewood. The first three lines form a preface, leading from laying down a bow to okifushi in the fourth line.
Fourth line, "okifushi yoru wa": okifushi is a pun on "laying down" a bow and a person "rising and lying down."
Fifth line, "i koso nerarene": i is a noun meaning sleep, echoing i, "to shoot," an associated word of the bow. The binding particle koso is resolved by the perfective ne, stressing that he cannot sleep. Like the previous poem, 604, it uses the upper verse's scene as a preface and turns to feeling through a pun.
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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