Tsune shiranu michi no nagate o kurekure to ika ni ka yukamu karite wa nashi ni

常知らぬ道の長手をくれくれと
いかにか行かむ糧はなしに

Roma-ji: Tsune shiranu michi no nagate o kurekure to ika ni ka yukamu karite wa nashi ni
English Translation: A road I never knew,
the long journey on ahead,
in a darkened heart
how am I to travel it,
with no provisions for the way?
Meaning: Down a long road I have never known, with a darkened heart, how am I to go, with no provisions for the journey?
Commentary: Book Five Miscellaneous Poems 888

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Six poems respectfully composed by Yamanoue no Okura, Governor of Chikuzen, in response, expressing Kumagori's feelings on his behalf, with preface"
The poem laments how he can travel an unknown road of death, dark at heart and without provisions. Overlaying the journey after death with an actual journey, it conveys the fear of one dying young.
For the last line, a variant introduced as "one version says" reads "with no dried rice." Here the main text is followed.
The preface records that Ōtomo no Kimi Kumagori, of Mashiki District in Higo, was on his way to the capital on the seventeenth day of the sixth month of Tenpyō 3, aged eighteen, as attendant to a provincial official serving as wrestling envoy, when he fell ill and died at the Takaba post station in Saeki District, Aki. On his deathbed he said that this borrowed body perishes easily and a life like foam cannot be held, but his aged parents in their hut were waiting for his return and would weep themselves blind on learning he would not come; what grieved him was not his own death but their suffering, and he composed six poems and died. Okura, speaking in Kumagori's place, wrote one long poem and five tanka.
The poet, Yamanoue no Okura, was an official who went to Tang China as a junior secretary with the embassy appointed in Taihō 1. After his return he served as Governor of Hōki and in the household of the Crown Prince, and late in the Jinki era he was posted to Tsukushi as Governor of Chikuzen. He is known for poems rooted in everyday life, on the sufferings of human existence, love for family, and poverty, written against a background of learning in Chinese classics and Buddhist scripture.

First line, "tsune shiranu": "never known," the road of death traveled for the first time.
Second line, "michi no nagate o": the same line as the second of 884, showing that it answers Asada no Yasu's poem.
Third line, "kurekure to": dark and downcast at heart, overlaid with the darkness of the road ahead.
Fourth line, "ika ni ka yukamu": "ka" is resolved by "mu": how shall I go? The poem breaks here.
Fifth line, "karite wa nashi ni": "karite" are provisions for a journey; by inversion it ends on the forlornness of setting out unprepared.
Author: Yamanoue no Okura
Source: Manyoshu
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