Unahara no oki yuku fune o kaere to ka hire furashikemu matsura sayohime

海原の沖行く船を帰れとか
領巾振らしけむ松浦佐用姫

Roma-ji: Unahara no oki yuku fune o kaere to ka hire furashikemu matsura sayohime
English Translation: Across the wide sea,
to the ship out in the offing,
was it "come back home"
that made her wave her scarf, I wonder —
Matsura Sayohime
Meaning: Did Matsura Sayohime wave her scarf at the ship out on the open sea, begging it to come back?
Commentary: Book Five Miscellaneous Poems 874

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Two responses by the very latest person"
The poet wonders whether Sayohime waved her scarf wishing the ship on the open sea to turn back. Where the two preceding poems looked to her intent to be remembered in a mountain's name, this one draws close to her poignant wish to call her husband back.
The headnote tells how Ōtomo no Sadehiko, sent by imperial command as an envoy to a land across the sea, set sail; his wife, Matsura Sayohime, lamenting that parting is easy and meeting hard, climbed a high peak, gazed after the departing ship, and at last took off her scarf and waved it. None who stood by could hold back their tears, and so the mountain came to be called the Peak of the Waving Scarf. It is identified with Mount Kagami in Karatsu. Opinions differ on the authorship of this sequence, some attributing it to Ōtomo no Tabito and others to Yamanoue no Okura, and no view is settled.

First line, "unahara no": the broad sea, shifting the view from the mountain to the sea.
Second line, "oki yuku fune o": the ship bearing her husband away.
Third line, "kaere to ka": "ka" poses a question: was it "come back"? It guesses at Sayohime's heart.
Fourth line, "hire furashikemu": "shi" is from the honorific "su" and "kemu" is past conjecture, answering "ka."
Fifth line, "Matsura Sayohime": the same last line as the preceding poem, naming the heroine last by inversion.
Source: Manyoshu
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