Tachibana no shima no miya ni wa akanu kamo sada no okabe ni tonoi shi ni yuku

橘の島の宮には飽かぬかも
佐田の岡辺に侍宿しに行く

Roma-ji: Tachibana no shima no miya ni wa akanu kamo sada no okabe ni tonoi shi ni yuku
English Translation: At the Shima Palace
in Tachibana, is it that
I am not content?
To the slopes of Sada Hill
I go to keep my watch.
Meaning: Is it that serving at the Shima Palace in Tachibana does not satisfy my heart? I go all the way to the slopes of Sada Hill to keep the night watch.
Commentary: Book Two Elegies 179

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Twenty-three poems composed in grief by the attendants of the Prince's palace"
As though service at the Shima Palace did not satisfy his heart, the attendant goes to keep watch on the slopes of Sada Hill, moving between the masterless palace and the temporary shrine.
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 ninth 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, "tachibana no," is a place-name in Asuka marking where the Shima Palace stood. In 125 by the novice Mikata in this book, the same word is used as the name of a tree.
The second line, "shima no miya ni wa," means "at the Shima Palace."
In the third line, "akanu kamo," aku means to be satisfied and kamo is an exclamation with a question: is it that I am not content? The poem pauses here.
The fourth line, "sada no okabe ni," means "to the slopes of Sada Hill," where the temporary shrine stood.
The final line, "tonoi shi ni yuku," means "I go to keep watch," showing how hard it is to leave the prince's side.
Source: Manyoshu
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