Michinoku no asaka no numa no hanakatsumi katsu miru hito ni koi ya wataramu - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

陸奥の安積の沼の花かつみ
かつ見る人に恋ひやわたらむ

Roma-ji: Michinoku no asaka no numa no hanakatsumi katsu miru hito ni koi ya wataramu
English Translation: In far Michinoku,
in the marsh of Asaka,
the katsumi blooms;
even as I see you now,
must I go on longing still?
Meaning: Like the katsumi blooming in the marsh of Asaka in far Michinoku, I see you even now—and yet must I go on yearning for you all the same?
Commentary: Book Fourteen Love Poems IV 677

Headnote: "Topic unknown"
A poem on a love that never ends even while the lovers meet: the speaker wonders whether he must keep longing for the very person before his eyes. The first three lines form a preface that leads, through the sound of "katsumi," to "katsu miru" (seeing even now), turning a distant northern landscape into feeling for the one close at hand.
Placed at the head of Love Poems IV in the Kokinshū, the poem opens a book devoted to love after the lovers have begun to meet. Its closing "koi ya wataramu" echoes the ending "koiwatarinamu" of 732 in this book, where the same lasting love is sung near the book's end. The head poem's longing even in the beloved's presence also answers the final poem, 746, which laments that a keepsake keeps the beloved from being forgotten, linking seeing and longing across the whole book.

The first line, "Michinoku no," names the province of Mutsu in the far northeast, a famed poetic place remote from the capital.
The second line, "Asaka no numa no," refers to the marsh of Asaka in Mutsu (near present-day Kōriyama in Fukushima), another celebrated poetic place.
The third line, "hanakatsumi," is the name of a water plant growing in the marsh, often taken as a kind of wild rice, though its identity is disputed. The first three lines serve as a preface introducing the homophonous "katsu miru."
In the fourth line, "katsu miru hito ni," "katsu" is an adverb meaning "at the same time," so the phrase means "even while I see you."
In the final line, "koi ya wataramu," "ya" is an interrogative particle, "wataru" adds the sense of continuing on and on, and the line closes with the attributive form of the conjectural "mu" in a kakari-musubi construction.
Author: Unknown Poet
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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