Kimi o okite adashi gokoro o waga motaba sue no matsuyama nami mo koenamu - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

君をおきてあだし心を我が持たば
末の松山波も越えなむ

Roma-ji: Kimi o okite adashi gokoro o waga motaba sue no matsuyama nami mo koenamu
English Translation: Setting you aside,
should I come to hold a heart
that wanders elsewhere,
over Sue no Matsuyama
the very waves would surely pass.
Meaning: If I ever turned from you and let my heart stray, the waves themselves would sweep over Sue no Matsuyama.
Commentary: Book Twenty Poems of the Bureau of Court Song 1093

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Songs of the East: Michinoku Song"
Invoking Sue no Matsuyama, a hill the waves never cross, the singer vows never to change heart. By naming the impossible it guarantees constancy, and it closes the Michinoku group. No author is recorded.
The Michinoku songs are folk songs of the province of Michinoku, today's Tōhoku region, forming the group of seven from poem 1087 to 1093. They are provincial songs taken up into court performance.
On the basis of this poem, Kiyohara no Motosuke composed "We swore it, did we not, each wringing tears from our sleeves: that the waves would never cross Sue no Matsuyama" (Goshūi Wakashū; Ogura Hyakunin Isshu), and Sue no Matsuyama became the poetic place of the vow never to change.

The first line, "setting you aside," means turning to someone else.
The second line, "a fickle heart," means a heart that strays.
The third line, "should I come to hold," uses ba for supposition.
The fourth line, "Sue no Matsuyama," is a hill in Michinoku, thought to be in today's Tagajō City, Miyagi, said never to be crossed by even the greatest waves.
The last line, "the waves too would surely cross," uses the intensive na and conjectural mu; naming the impossible makes it a vow.
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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