Kamukara ka mi ga hoshikaramu miyoshino no taki no kōchi wa miredo akanu kamo

神からか見が欲しからむみ吉野の
滝の河内は見れど飽かぬかも

Roma-ji: Kamukara ka mi ga hoshikaramu miyoshino no taki no kōchi wa miredo akanu kamo
English Translation: Is it for its god
that one longs to look on it?
In fair Yoshino
the river bend of the rapids:
though I gaze I never tire
Meaning: Is it the nature of its god that makes one long to see it? The river bend of the rapids in fair Yoshino—however long I gaze on it, I never tire.
Commentary: Book Six Miscellaneous Poems 910

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "An envoy in a certain book reads"
This poem praises the river bend of the Yoshino rapids, wondering whether it is the nature of the god dwelling there that makes one long to see it, and declaring that one never tires of gazing on it. In another book it was attached as an envoy to the long poem 907, which Kasa no Kanamura composed on Empress Genshō's progress to Yoshino in the fifth month of Yōrō 7 (723).
"Envoys from a certain book" means envoys handed down in another text; the three poems 910 to 912 belong to this group. Apart from the two envoys in the main text, the compiler also recorded these poems, which had come down attached to the same long poem.
The upper verse, "Is it for its god that one longs to see it," borrows almost unchanged the long poem's "Is it for its god that it is so noble, is it for its land that one longs to see it," and the lower verse is identical to that of 909, one of the envoys in the main text. Combining phrases from the long poem and the envoy, it presents the holiness of the land as the reason its beauty never palls.
The poet, Kasa no Kanamura, was a court poet of the early Nara period who accompanied the sovereigns from Empress Genshō to Emperor Shōmu on their progresses and left many poems of praise. Together with Yamabe no Akahito, he is regarded as a representative poet of the age.

The lower verse of this poem, "the river bend of the rapids: though I gaze I never tire," is exactly the same as in the preceding poem, 909, so that both the main text and the other book hand down the same words of praise.
The first line, "Is it for its god," means "is it because of the nature of its god." "Kara" denotes the inherent nature of a thing, and "ka" is an interrogative binding particle.
The second line, "that one longs to see it," means "is that why one wishes to see it," and closes the binding begun by "ka" in the first line with the attributive form of the conjectural auxiliary "ramu." It repeats the long poem's phrase as it stands, and the sense breaks after this line.
In the third line, "of fair Yoshino," the prefix "mi-" is an honorific that speaks of Yoshino with reverence.
The fourth line, "the river bend of the rapids," means the river bend through which the torrent flows, and the particle "wa" singles out the object of praise.
The final line, "though I gaze I never tire," means "however long I look, I never tire of it," closing the poem with the set phrase of Yoshino praise poems.
Author: Kasa no Kanamura
Source: Manyoshu
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