classic waka stream

家離りいます我妹を留めかね
山隠しつれ心どもなし
Roma-ji

Iezakari imasu wagimo o todomekane yamagakushitsure kokorodo mo nashi

English Translation
Leaving our home far,
my dear wife went on her way—
I could not hold her;
in the hills I've hidden her,
and my heart has lost its strength.
Meaning
I could not hold back my wife as she left our home, and I have hidden her away in the hills—now I have no heart for anything.
Commentary
Book Three Elegies 471

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Five more poems composed while grief had not yet ceased"
This is the second of the five poems composed while his grief had not yet ceased. Unable to hold back his wife as she left their home, he has laid her in the hills, and now he has lost all will to live—the depth of his loss. Yo no Myōgun's poem 457 in this book also ends "no heart is left in me," expressing with the same words the emptiness of losing someone dear.
This belongs to a sequence of elegies that Ōtomo no Yakamochi composed from the sixth month of summer into autumn in Tenpyō 11 (739), mourning his late concubine.
The poet, Ōtomo no Yakamochi, was a son of Ōtomo no Tabito and a Nara-period official. He served as Governor of Etchū and of Inaba, among other posts, rose to Middle Counselor, and died in Enryaku 4 (785). He is thought to have been deeply involved in compiling the Man'yōshū.

First line "Leaving our home far" means departing from home.
Second line "my dear wife went on her way": imasu is the honorific of "to go."
Third line "I could not hold her" means he was unable to keep her.
Fourth line "in the hills I've hidden her": tsure, the conditional of the perfective tsu, gives "since I have hidden her"—her burial in the hills.
Fifth line "and my heart has lost its strength": kokorodo is a steady spirit. It is the same last line as poem 457.
Author
Otomo no Yakamochi
Source
Manyoshu
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