Watatsumi no oki ni mochiyukite hanatsu tomo uremu zo kore ga yomigaerinamu

海神の沖に持ち行きて放つとも
うれむぞこれがよみがへりなむ

Roma-ji: Watatsumi no oki ni mochiyukite hanatsu tomo uremu zo kore ga yomigaerinamu
English Translation: Out to the sea god,
to the offing, though you take
and release it there—
how could this ever come
back to life again, I ask?
Meaning: Even if you carry it out to the sea god's offing and set it free—how could this ever come back to life?
Commentary: Book Three Miscellaneous Poems 327

Headnote: "A poem composed by Tsūkan when certain young women sent him a wrapped dried abalone and playfully asked the monk Tsūkan to recite a prayer over it"
Some young women sent the monk Tsūkan a wrapped dried abalone and playfully asked him to perform a prayer for releasing it into the sea as a living creature. With a frankness hardly monkish, he replies that however far out you release a dried shellfish, it cannot come back to life—meeting their joke with wit. It is a charming exchange drawing on the Buddhist rite of releasing living beings.
The poet, Tsūkan, was a monk of the Nara period, but little is known of him.

First line "Out to the sea god": watatsumi is the god of the sea, here the sea itself.
Second line "to the offing, though you take" has one syllable too many.
Third line "and release it there": tomo is a concessive condition, alluding to the rite of releasing living things.
Fourth line "how could this ever": uremu zo is a rhetorical adverb meaning "how." Kore is the dried abalone.
Fifth line "come back to life again": na is perfective and mu conjectural, ending in a rhetorical "never."
Author: Tsūkan
Source: Manyoshu
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