Tsure mo naki sada no okabe ni kaeri iba shima no mihashi ni tare ka sumawamu

つれもなき佐田の岡辺に帰り居ば
島の御階に誰れか住まはむ

Roma-ji: Tsure mo naki sada no okabe ni kaeri iba shima no mihashi ni tare ka sumawamu
English Translation: If we go and dwell
on the slopes of Sada Hill,
strange and far from home,
then who will live on the stairs
of the Shima Palace halls?
Meaning: If we go to live on the slopes of Sada Hill, a place that means nothing to us, who then will dwell on the stairs of the Shima Palace?
Commentary: Book Two Elegies 187

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Twenty-three poems composed in grief by the attendants of the Prince's palace"
If the attendants move to keep watch on the slopes of Sada Hill, which means nothing to them, who will live in the halls of the Shima Palace? The speaker thinks of the palace about to be abandoned.
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 seventeenth 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, "tsure mo naki," means "with no ties or connections."
The second line, "sada no okabe ni," means "on the slopes of Sada Hill," where the temporary shrine was placed.
The third line, "kaeri iba," means "if we go and dwell," with ba marking a supposition.
In the fourth line, "shima no mihashi ni," mihashi means the stairs of a palace, standing for the halls of the Shima Palace.
In the final line, "tare ka sumawamu," ka is an interrogative binding particle concluding in the attributive mu: who will go on living there?
Source: Manyoshu
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