Mitatashi no shima o miru toki niwatazumi nagaruru namida tome zo kanetsuru

み立たしの島を見る時にはたづみ
流るる涙止めぞかねつる

Roma-ji: Mitatashi no shima o miru toki niwatazumi nagaruru namida tome zo kanetsuru
English Translation: When I look upon
the garden isle where he once stood,
like rain on the ground,
the tears that flow down my face
I cannot hold them back.
Meaning: When I look upon the garden isle where our prince used to stand, the tears that stream like rainwater on the ground cannot be held back.
Commentary: Book Two Elegies 178

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Twenty-three poems composed in grief by the attendants of the Prince's palace"
Seeing the garden isle where the prince once stood and gazed, the speaker cannot stop the tears that overflow; grief is renewed at a place of memory.
According to the headnote, these are twenty-three poems composed in grief by the attendants who served in Prince Kusakabe's palace. A left note, citing the Nihon shoki, records that the prince died in the fourth month of the third year of Empress Jitō's reign (689). The sequence takes up, scene by scene, the laments of the attendants: the garden and ponds of the Shima Palace bereft of their master, and the night watches they kept on the hills of Mayumi and Sada where the prince lay in state. This is the eighth poem of the sequence.
The authors were the attendants who served in Prince Kusakabe's palace, and their individual names have not come down to us. Toneri were officials who served close to the Emperor and members of the imperial family as guards and aides. One theory holds that Kakinomoto no Hitomaro composed the poems in the attendants' voice, but this is not settled.

The first line, "mitatashi no," means "where he stood," and also appears in the tenth, eleventh, and eighteenth poems of the sequence, 180, 181, and 188.
In the second line, "shima o miru toki," shima means a garden laid out with ponds and hillocks.
The third line, "niwatazumi," is rainwater flowing on the ground, a pillow word for nagaru, "to flow."
The fourth line, "nagaruru namida," means "the flowing tears."
In the final line, "tome zo kanetsuru," zo is a binding particle concluding in tsuru, the attributive of the perfective tsu: I cannot stop them.
Source: Manyoshu
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