Kazahaya no Miho no urami no shiratsutsuji miredomo sabushi naki hito omoeba

風早の美穂の浦廻の白つつじ
見れども寂しなき人思へば

Roma-ji: Kazahaya no Miho no urami no shiratsutsuji miredomo sabushi naki hito omoeba
English Translation: Where the fierce winds blow,
along the shore of Miho,
the white azaleas—
though I gaze, how lonely they seem,
when I think of the one who's gone.
Meaning: The white azaleas on the windswept shore of Miho—even as I look at them, I feel desolate, thinking of the one who has died.
Commentary: Book Three Elegies 434

Headnote: "Four poems composed in grief by Kawabe no Miyahito on seeing the body of a beautiful woman in the pine grove of Himeshima in Wadō 4, the year kanoto-i"
This is the first of Kawabe no Miyahito's four poems. The white azaleas blooming along the shore of Miho are lovely, but thinking of the one who died here, he finds them lonely to look upon—setting a beautiful scene against the grief of death. The pure white of the azaleas recalls the dead girl. At the end of the original text there is a note of variant, "Some say: when I look, how sad, thinking of the one who is gone"; here the main text is followed. The location of Miho Bay is debated.
Kawabe no Miyahito's four poems form a sequence composed in deep grief upon seeing the body of a young woman in the pine grove of Himeshima in Settsu in Wadō 4 (711). Himeshima is thought to be in present-day Nishiyodogawa Ward, Osaka. The left note to the fourth poem says that the date, the place, and the author's name have already appeared earlier (meaning poems 228 and 229 of Book Two), but since the wording differs and it is hard to tell which is right, the poems are recorded here again.
The poet, Kawabe no Miyahito, lived in the early Nara period, but little is known of him.

First line "Where the fierce winds blow": kazahaya is taken either as a pillow word for Miho or as a place name.
Second line "along the shore of Miho": urami is a winding shore.
Third line "the white azaleas" names the white flowers.
Fourth line "though I gaze, how lonely they seem": domo is concessive; the sentence breaks here.
Fifth line "when I think of the one who's gone" gives by inversion the reason for his loneliness.
Author: Kawabe no Miyahito
Source: Manyoshu
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