Miwa no yama ika ni machimimu toshi fu tomo tazunuru hito mo araji to omoeba - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

三輪の山いかに待ち見む年経とも
尋ぬる人もあらじと思へば

Roma-ji: Miwa no yama ika ni machimimu toshi fu tomo tazunuru hito mo araji to omoeba
English Translation: At Mount Miwa,
how am I to wait for you,
when, though years go by,
I am sure there will be none
who comes seeking after me?
Meaning: How am I to wait at Mount Miwa, when I am sure that no one will come looking for me, however many years may pass?
Commentary: Book Fifteen Love Poems V 780

Headnote: "When Lord Nakahira, whom she had known intimately, grew distant, she was going to her father, then Governor of Yamato, and composed and sent this."
Ise sent this to Fujiwara no Nakahira when their relationship had cooled and she was leaving to join her father, Governor of Yamato. Even waiting at Mount Miwa in Yamato, she writes, no one will come seeking her however many years pass, a poem of resignation and reproach at parting.
It draws on poem 982 in Book Eighteen, "My hut is at the foot of Mount Miwa; if you long for me, come and visit, at the gate where the cedars stand," and reverses the invitation of the source poem: no one will come. The opening of the Ise Collection also tells the story of this love in narrative form.
Ise was the daughter of Fujiwara no Tsugukage, Governor of Ise, and served Onshi, empress of Emperor Uda. She bore Uda a prince and later, with Prince Atsuyoshi, bore the poet Nakatsukasa. One of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals, she has more poems in the Kokinshū than any other woman.

The first line names Mount Miwa in Yamato, her father's province. Echoing the source poem's "foot of Mount Miwa," it is the place where one waits for a visitor.
In the second line ika ni means "how," and machimimu "shall I try waiting," expressing bewilderment at how to wait. The poem breaks here.
In the third line tomo is a concessive hypothetical: even if years pass.
The fourth line, "one who seeks me out," answers the source poem's invitation to visit and alludes to Nakahira.
In the last line ji is negative conjecture, "there will surely be no one," giving the reason for the second line by inversion.
Author: Ise
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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