Inishie no hito ni ware are ya sasanami no furuki miyako o mireba kanashiki

古の人に我れあれや楽浪の
古き都を見れば悲しき

Roma-ji: Inishie no hito ni ware are ya sasanami no furuki miyako o mireba kanashiki
English Translation: Am I, then, a man
of those days of long ago?
At Sasanami,
when I see the ancient capital,
how sorrowful it is!
Meaning: Am I someone from the days of old? I am not—and yet, when I look upon the old capital at Sasanami, I am filled with sorrow.
Commentary: Book One Miscellaneous Poems 32

Headnote: "A poem composed by Takechi no Furuhito, grieving over the old capital of Ōmi (one text says Takechi no Muraji Kurohito)"
Looking on the ruined old capital of Ōmi, the poet wonders why he feels such sorrow though he is no man of those bygone days. It conveys a desolation so deep that even one who never knew the capital's glory is shaken, and alongside Hitomaro's poems it mourns the old capital of Ōmi. Because one text gives Takechi no Muraji Kurohito for the headnote's "Takechi no Furuhito," the poem is attributed to Kurohito, though some take "Furuhito" as the author's name.
Takechi no Kurohito was a poet of the reigns of Empress Jitō and Emperor Monmu whose rank and career are unknown. Many of his poems come from royal journeys, and he excelled at landscape poems that quietly gaze on the loneliness of travel.

The first line, "of long ago," refers to the past age when the capital stood in Ōmi.
In the second line, the particle ya makes a rhetorical question: "am I a man of old? Surely not." This ya is answered by the attributive kanashiki at the end in a kakari-musubi construction. The line is hypermetric.
The third line, Sasanami no, uses the same word as the opening lines of poems 30 and 31 in this book to name the old capital's land, echoing Hitomaro's poems on the ruined capital.
The fourth line, "the ancient capital," points to the ruins of the Ōtsu Palace. Pairing "of long ago" in the first line with "ancient" here, it intensifies the thought of time gone by.
The last line closes the kakari-musubi with the attributive kanashiki, answering the ya of the second line, and ends in a sigh: "how sad it is to see." Its near twin, the last line of the next poem, "how sad it is to see," makes the two a pair.
Author: Takechi no Kurohito
Source: Manyoshu
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