Kamoyama no iwane shi makeru ware o kamo shirani to imo ga machitsutsu aruramu

鴨山の岩根しまける我れをかも
知らにと妹が待ちつつあるらむ

Roma-ji: Kamoyama no iwane shi makeru ware o kamo shirani to imo ga machitsutsu aruramu
English Translation: On Kamo's mountain,
pillowed here upon the rocks,
do I lie, and she,
not knowing, my dear wife
must still be waiting for me.
Meaning: Not knowing that I lie here with my head pillowed on the rocks of Mount Kamo, my wife must still be waiting for me to come home.
Commentary: Book Two Elegies 223

Headnote: "A poem composed by Kakinomoto no Asomi Hitomaro, grieving over himself, when he was about to die in the province of Iwami"
Facing death on Mount Kamo in Iwami with his head on the rocks, he thinks at the last of his wife, who must still be waiting for him without knowing.
According to the headnote, Hitomaro composed this in grief over himself when he was about to die in Iwami, and it is regarded as his death poem. It forms a group with his wife's poems and a poem written in his voice that follow, and some see the group as a narrative arranged by later hands.
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.
In 86 of this book, Empress Iwa no Hime's "iwane shi makite shinamashi mono o" wished, for love's pain, to die pillowed on rocks. Here the same image of the rock pillow becomes an actual death, forming an inverted pair of love's wish and death's reality.

In the first line, "kamoyama no," Mount Kamo is said to be in Iwami, though its location is unsettled.
In the second line, "iwane shi makeru," iwane is a great rock, shi intensive, maku means to use as a pillow, and ru is stative: lying pillowed on the rocks.
In the third line, "ware o kamo," ka is an interrogative binding particle concluding in the attributive ramu of the final line.
In the fourth line, "shirani to imo ga," shirani means "not knowing": my wife, unaware.
In the final line, "machitsutsu aruramu," tsutsu marks continuation and ramu present conjecture: she must still be waiting, as he thinks of his distant wife to the end.
Author: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Source: Manyoshu
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