Momoshiki no ōmiyahito no Nikitatsu ni funanori shikemu toshi no shiranaku

ももしきの大宮人の熟田津に
船乗りしけむ年の知らなく

Roma-ji: Momoshiki no ōmiyahito no Nikitatsu ni funanori shikemu toshi no shiranaku
English Translation: Of the hundred stones,
the courtiers of the palace
at Nikitatsu
once set sail upon the sea—
but the year, no one now knows.
Meaning: The courtiers of the palace once set sail from Nikitatsu here—but in what year it was, no one now can tell.
Commentary: Book Three Miscellaneous Poems 323

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "A poem with tanka composed by Yamabe no Sukune Akahito on reaching the hot springs of Iyo" — "Envoy"
This is the envoy to a long poem written on visiting the hot springs of Iyo. The courtiers once set sail from Nikitatsu, but that was so long ago that no one knows when—a meditation on the years gone by. It draws on the time in the seventh year of Empress Saimei (661) when the court, on its western expedition, called at Nikitatsu and set sail, and it recalls Princess Nukata's poem 8 in Book One, "At Nikitatsu, as we wait for the moon to board our ships, the tide has come in too—now let us row out!"
The poet, Yamabe no Akahito, was a court poet of the reign of Shōmu who composed many poems on royal excursions and excelled in clear, limpid landscape verse. Later ages ranked him with Kakinomoto no Hitomaro as a "Saint of Poetry."

First line "Of the hundred stones" renders momoshiki no, a pillow word for ōmiya, "palace."
Second line "the courtiers of the palace" means those who served at court.
Third line "at Nikitatsu": a harbor in Iyo, thought to be near present-day Matsuyama.
Fourth line "once set sail upon the sea": kemu is past conjecture—"must have set sail."
Fifth line "but the year, no one now knows": naku, the nominal form of the negative, ends with a sigh.
Author: Yamabe no Akahito
Source: Manyoshu
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