Aki no no ni yadoru tabibito uchinabiki i mo nurame ya mo inishie omou ni

安騎の野に宿る旅人うち靡き
寐も寝らめやもいにしへ思ふに

Roma-ji: Aki no no ni yadoru tabibito uchinabiki i mo nurame ya mo inishie omou ni
English Translation: The travelers who
spend the night on Aki's plain—
could they lie at ease
and sink down into slumber,
as they think of days gone by?
Meaning: Could the travelers lodging on the plain of Aki lie down at ease and sleep? Not when they think of days gone by.
Commentary: Book One Miscellaneous Poems 46

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "A poem composed by Kakinomoto no Asomi Hitomaro when Prince Karu lodged on the plain of Aki — short poem"
The travelers who lodged on the plain of Aki with Prince Karu cannot lie down and sleep at ease, for they are thinking of the past. "The past" means the days when Prince Kusakabe, Prince Karu's father who died young, hunted on this very land, and longing for the lost prince runs through the poem. Prince Karu later became Emperor Monmu. This and the three poems up to 49 form a sequence of short poems following the long poem, unfolding from night to dawn.
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro was a court poet active in the reigns of Empress Jitō and Emperor Monmu, and he is the foremost poet of the Man'yōshū. Though his rank appears to have been low, he left many grand and dignified poems, above all long poems, and later ages revered him as a "saint of poetry."

The first line names the plain of Aki in Uda District, Yamato, around present-day Ōuda in Uda, Nara Prefecture—the land where Prince Kusakabe once hunted.
The second line, "the travelers who lodge," refers to Prince Karu's party camping on the plain.
In the third line, uchi is a prefix and nabiku means to lie down: "stretching out at ease."
In the fourth line, i means sleep, rame is the perfective form of the conjectural ramu, and ya mo is rhetorical: "could they sleep? Surely not." The poem breaks here, inverted with the last line.
The last line, "as they think of the past," gives the reason for sleeplessness at the end through inversion. It takes up the long poem's closing "thinking of the past," binding long poem and short poem together.
Author: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Source: Manyoshu
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