Aritsutsu mo kimi o ba matamu uchinabiku waga kurokami ni shimo no oku made ni

ありつつも君をば待たむうち靡く
我が黒髪に霜の置くまでに

Roma-ji: Aritsutsu mo kimi o ba matamu uchinabiku waga kurokami ni shimo no oku made ni
English Translation: Just as I am now
I shall wait on for you, love,
until the hoarfrost
comes to settle on my hair,
this black hair that flows so long.
Meaning: I will go on waiting for you just as I am, until frost settles on my long, flowing black hair.
Commentary: Book Two Love Poems 87

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Four poems composed by Empress Iwa no Hime in longing for the Emperor"
The speaker vows an unchanging heart, promising to wait until frost settles on her black hair, that is, until it turns white. The mood moves from the violent wish for death to a quiet resolve to wait.
This is the third of the four poems Empress Iwa no Hime composed in longing for Emperor Nintoku; the authorship follows the headnote of the sequence.
The author, Empress Iwa no Hime, was the daughter of Katsuragi no Sotsuhiko and the consort of Emperor Nintoku. The Kojiki and the Nihon shoki portray her as a fiercely jealous empress. The poems in this sequence are thought to have been composed by later poets and attributed to her.
Poem 89 in this book records a variant of this poem as "a poem from another text." There the speaker waits "sitting up till dawn," so the two treat the same theme on different scales: a single night and the passing years.

The first line, "aritsutsu mo," means "remaining just as I am," with tsutsu marking continuation.
In the second line, "kimi o ba matamu," o ba is an emphatic form of o, and mu expresses intention. The poem pauses here, stating her resolve first. The second line of 89 in this book is identical.
The third line, "uchinabiku," describes long hair swaying; uchi is a prefix that smooths the rhythm.
The fourth line, "waga kurokami ni," points to a young woman's black hair, set against the whiteness of the frost in the final line.
The final line, "shimo no oku made ni," is understood as a figure for hair turning white. Inverted to follow the second line, it ends the poem by stressing the length of the wait.
Author: Empress Iwa no Hime
Source: Manyoshu
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