Shimagakuri waga kogikureba tomoshikamo yamato e noboru makumano no fune

島隠り我が漕ぎ来れば羨しかも
大和へ上るま熊野の船

Roma-ji: Shimagakuri waga kogikureba tomoshikamo yamato e noboru makumano no fune
English Translation: Hid behind islands
as I come rowing along—
how I envy it:
going up to Yamato,
a boat of fair Kumano
Meaning: As I row along, hidden behind the islands, how I envy it: a Kumano boat heading up toward Yamato.
Commentary: Book Six Miscellaneous Poems 944

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Three envoys"
This poem tells how, rowing among the islands, the poet sees a Kumano boat heading up toward Yamato and envies it. The long poem immediately before it (942) is titled "A poem composed by Yamabe no Sukune Akahito when passing the island of Karani," and laments that as the poet, parted from his wife, sails on past Nojima in Awaji and looks toward home between the islands of Karani, the blue hills cannot be seen, screened off by white clouds.
Catching the moment when the poet's boat, bound west away from the capital, passes a boat heading back toward Yamato, the poem expresses his longing for home as envy of a stranger's vessel. The contrast, in which other boats head for the very direction of the home that was hidden by white clouds in the long poem, deepens his homesickness all the more.
The poet, Yamabe no Akahito, was a court poet of the early Nara period who accompanied Emperor Shōmu on his progresses and left many poems of praise. He excelled at poems that depict natural scenery with clarity and calm, and later generations revered him, alongside Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, as a sage of poetry.

The phrases "going up to Yamato" and "how I envy" are shared with "how I envy the geese that cross over to Yamato" in 954 of this book, so that the pattern of envying whatever travels toward Yamato is repeated, first with a boat and then with geese.
The first line, "Hid behind islands," describes the voyage threading between the islands, sheltered in their lee. It forms a pair with "hid in the bay" in the next poem, 945.
The second line, "as I come rowing along," gives the occasion on which the poet meets the scene described in the following lines.
The third line, "how I envy it," ends with the exclamatory particle "kamo." The sense breaks here, making this a poem with a pause after the third line, and what is envied is revealed in the lower lines.
The fourth line, "going up to Yamato," means heading toward Yamato, where the capital lay. Travel to the capital is called "going up," which sharpens the contrast with the direction in which the poet is heading.
In the final line, "a boat of fair Kumano," the prefix "ma-" is honorific, and the phrase refers to a boat built in Kumano or in the Kumano style. Closing on a noun, the poem names at last the object of the envy voiced in the third line, in inverted order.
Author: Yamabe no Akahito
Source: Manyoshu
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