Hisakata no ame miru gotoku augimishi miko no mikado no aremaku oshi mo

ひさかたの天見るごとく仰ぎ見し
皇子の御門の荒れまく惜しも

Roma-ji: Hisakata no ame miru gotoku augimishi miko no mikado no aremaku oshi mo
English Translation: As one gazes up
at the far-reaching heavens,
so we gazed on it—
the palace of our prince:
how sad that it must fall to ruin!
Meaning: The prince's palace, which we looked up to as one gazes at the heavens—how sad it is that it will now fall into ruin.
Commentary: Book Two Elegies 168

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Poems composed by Kakinomoto no Asomi Hitomaro at the time of the temporary enshrinement of Prince Hinamishi, two envoys"
The poem mourns that the palace of Prince Kusakabe, looked up to as one looks up to the heavens, will now fall into ruin without its master.
These are elegies Kakinomoto no Hitomaro composed during the temporary enshrinement of Prince Kusakabe, when his body lay in state before burial. The long poem 167 is a major work that begins from the myth of the creation of heaven and earth and goes on to mourn the prince's death. Prince Kusakabe, son of Emperor Tenmu and Empress Jitō, died as Crown Prince in the third year of Jitō's reign (689) and was honored as Hinamishi no Miko no Mikoto. This is the first of the two envoys attached to that long poem.
The author, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, was a court poet active in the reigns of Empress Jitō and Emperor Monmu. A master of the long poem and the elegy, he is the representative poet of the Man'yōshū and was later revered as the Saint of Poetry.

The first line, "hisakata no," is a pillow word for ame, "heaven."
The second line, "ame miru gotoku," means "as one looks at the heavens," showing how the prince was revered like heaven itself.
In the third line, "augimishi," shi is the attributive of the past auxiliary ki: that we looked up to.
In the fourth line, "miko no mikado no," mikado means the palace. In the attendants' poems that follow, the prince's palace appears again and again, as "shima no mikado" in 173 and "ōki mikado" in 186 of this book.
In the final line, "aremaku oshi mo," maku is the nominalized form of mu: its coming ruin is to be regretted, with mo as an exclamation.
Author: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Source: Manyoshu
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