Katami koso ima wa ada nare kore naku wa wasururu toki mo aramashi mono o - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

形見こそ今はあだなれこれなくは
忘るる時もあらましものを

Roma-ji: Katami koso ima wa ada nare kore naku wa wasururu toki mo aramashi mono o
English Translation: It is the keepsake
that is now my enemy;
if not for this,
there might have been a time
when I could forget you.
Meaning: It is this keepsake that has now become my enemy; without it, there might have come a time when I could forget.
Commentary: Book Fourteen Love Poems IV 746

Headnote: "Topic unknown"
Because of the keepsake the lover left behind, the speaker cannot forget, and so resents it. Through the paradox of calling a keepsake—meant to keep a person in memory—an "enemy," the poem expresses the depth of the pain of being unable to forget.
Placed at the end of Love Poems IV, it closes the sequence on keepsakes that began with 743. Where the head poem, 677, sang of longing even while meeting, this final poem sings of being unable to forget because of a keepsake, closing the book by showing that the feelings of love's beginning continue even after parting.

The first line, "katami koso," means "it is the keepsake," with the particle "koso" forming a kakari-musubi with "nare" in the second line. It uses the same word "katami" as the three preceding poems.
The second line, "ima wa ada nare," means "is now my enemy," "nare," the perfective form of the copula "nari," completing the "koso"; the poem pauses here.
The third line, "kore naku wa," means "if not for this," a hypothesis.
The fourth line, "wasururu toki mo," means "a time of forgetting, too."
The final line, "aramashi mono o," means "there might have been," the counterfactual "mashi" joined to the adversative exclamation "mono o."
Author: Unknown Poet
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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