Hatakora ga yoru hiru to iwazu yuku michi o ware wa kotogoto miyaji ni zo suru

畑子らが夜昼といはず行く道を
我れはことごと宮道にぞする

Roma-ji: Hatakora ga yoru hiru to iwazu yuku michi o ware wa kotogoto miyaji ni zo suru
English Translation: The road that farmers
travel on without a thought
of night or of day—
all of it I make my own
as the road to the palace.
Meaning: The road the farmers walk without regard for night or day—every bit of it I now make my road to the palace.
Commentary: Book Two Elegies 193

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Twenty-three poems composed in grief by the attendants of the Prince's palace"
The country roads that farm folk walk day and night have all become, for him, the road to the temporary shrine; the poem closes the twenty-three poems of the attendants with this changed reality of service.
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 twenty-third 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.
With this poem, the twenty-three poems of the attendants that began with 171 come to a close.

In the first line, "hatakora ga," hatako means people who work the fields, and ra marks the plural.
The second line, "yoru hiru to iwazu," means "regardless of night or day."
The third line, "yuku michi o," means "the road they travel."
In the fourth line, "ware wa kotogoto," kotogoto means "all of it."
In the final line, "miyaji ni zo suru," zo is a binding particle concluding in the attributive suru: I make it my road to the palace. The contrast of the farmers' road and the palace road closes the sequence.
Source: Manyoshu
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