Momoe ni mo kishikanu kamo to omoe kamo kimi ga tsukai no miredo akazu aramu

百重にも来及かぬかもと思へかも
君が使の見れど飽かずあらむ

Roma-ji: Momoe ni mo kishikanu kamo to omoe kamo kimi ga tsukai no miredo akazu aramu
English Translation: Even hundredfold,
may they come on after one another;
is it that I wish it,
that your messengers to me
I can never tire of seeing
Meaning: Is it because I wish them to come a hundred times over, one after another, that I can never tire of seeing the messengers you send?
Commentary: Book Four Love Poems 499

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Four poems by Kakinomoto no Asomi Hitomaro"
The speaker wonders whether it is because she wishes them to come a hundred times over that she never tires of the messengers sent by her lover. Through the messengers she feels her tie to him, and her eager waiting for them shows plainly. Because the poem addresses "you" (kimi), it is also read as spoken in a woman's voice, and some think Hitomaro composed it imagining the feelings of the woman he loved.
The author, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, was a court poet active in the reigns of Empress Jitō and Emperor Monmu; a master of both long and short poems, he was revered by later ages as the saint of poetry.

First line, "Even hundredfold," means repeated a hundred times; it uses the same word momoe as "hundredfold layered" in the first poem of the four, so that the sequence's beginning and end answer each other.
Second line, "may they come on after one another," uses kishiku, to come following one after another, with the wishful nu kamo: I wish they would keep coming.
Third line, "is it that I wish it," joins the perfective form to kamo to pose a questioning condition: is it because I think so? It is closed by the attributive mu in the fifth line.
Fourth line, "that your messengers to me," means the messengers from you, showing a heart that thinks of the beloved through his messengers rather than the man himself.
Fifth line, "I can never tire of seeing," means I seem never to tire of looking, closing in the attributive as kamo requires.
Author: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Source: Manyoshu
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