Taki no ue no mifune no yama wa kashikokedo omoi wasururu toki mo hi mo nashi

滝の上の三船の山は畏けど
思ひ忘るる時も日もなし

Roma-ji: Taki no ue no mifune no yama wa kashikokedo omoi wasururu toki mo hi mo nashi
English Translation: Above the rapids
Mount Mifune rises high—
though it fills me with awe,
when I forget my longing
there is no hour and no day
Meaning: Mount Mifune, towering above the rapids, fills me with awe; and yet there is not an hour, not a day, when I forget my longing.
Commentary: Book Six Miscellaneous Poems 914

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "One envoy"
This poem says that though Mount Mifune, rising beside the Yoshino rapids, is holy and awe-inspiring, there is not a moment or a day when the poet forgets the one longed for. The long poem immediately before (913) is titled "A poem composed by Kurumamochi no Asomi Chitose," and while praising the pure riverbed of Yoshino, it ends: "Since this is a journey on which I do not loosen my sash, it is a pity that I alone should see this pure riverbed," regretting that, parted from his wife on the journey, he must view the scene alone.
The envoy takes up this ending, and the thoughts the poet can never forget seem to be for the wife left at home. Knowing that before the sacred Mount Mifune one ought to hold one's heart in check, the poet frankly confesses that longing still cannot be suppressed.
The left note to this sequence reads: "The year and month of the above are unclear, but because the poems are of the same kind they are placed next. A certain book says they were composed when the Emperor made a progress to the detached palace at Yoshino in the fifth month of Yōrō 7." The date of composition is unknown, but being Yoshino poems they were placed after Kasa no Kanamura's poems from the Yoshino progress of Yōrō 7 (723), and another book records them as composed on that very progress.
The poet, Kurumamochi no Chitose, was a court poet of the early Nara period whose life is otherwise unknown. Chitose composed poems while accompanying imperial progresses in the same period as Kasa no Kanamura and Yamabe no Akahito.

The words "Mount Mifune above the rapids" in the upper verse are the same as the beginning of the long poem that heads this book, 907, "On Mount Mifune above the rapids," and this shared phrase also shows why the poem was placed after Kanamura's group as another Yoshino poem.
The first line, "Above the rapids," means beside the torrent. "Taki" in the Man'yōshū usually means rapids, and "ue" denotes their vicinity.
The second line, "Mount Mifune," refers to Mount Mifune, which rises south of Miyataki in Yoshino. The particle "wa" singles out the mountain as the object of awe.
The third line, "though it fills me with awe," is a concessive expressing reverence for a mountain where a god dwells. From here the lower verse turns to thoughts that cannot be held back.
The fourth line, "when I forget my longing," modifies "time" that follows. What is longed for is not stated, but read together with the ending of the long poem it points to thoughts of the wife at home.
The final line, "there is no hour, no day," means not a single moment or a single day, and by piling "hour" upon "day" it stresses that the longing continues without a break.
Author: Kurumamochi no Chitose
Source: Manyoshu
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