Kokoro yu mo wa wa omowazuki mata sara ni waga furusato ni kaerikomu to wa

心ゆも我は思はずきまたさらに
我が故郷に帰り来むとは

Roma-ji: Kokoro yu mo wa wa omowazuki mata sara ni waga furusato ni kaerikomu to wa
English Translation: Never in my heart
did I think it would be so,
that once more, again,
to my old home I would come,
coming back the way I went
Meaning: Never in my heart did I imagine that I would come back once again to my old home.
Commentary: Book Four Love Poems 609

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Twenty-four poems sent by Lady Kasa to Ōtomo no Sukune Yakamochi"
This is the first of the last two of the twenty-four poems; the left note says these two were sent afresh after the lovers had parted. Never did she think she would come back again to her old home, she laments, having left the capital. It shares its first two lines, "never in my heart did I think," with poem 601, so that the same words of lament recur near the end of the series.
The author, Lady Kasa, was a woman poet of the Nara period who sent many love poems to Ōtomo no Yakamochi. Little else is known of her.

First line, "Never in my heart," uses yu, an old particle of origin, answering the negative; it opens the same way as poem 601.
Second line, "did I think it would be so," uses the past ki: I did not think. The poem breaks after this line.
Third line, "that once more, again," means again, anew.
Fourth line, "to my old home I would come," means to my native place, showing that she has left the capital and returned home.
Fifth line, "coming back the way I went," means that I would come back, returning by inversion to the second line.
Author: Lady Kasa
Source: Manyoshu
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