Suma no ama no shioyakiginu no nare naba ka hitohi mo kimi o wasurete omowamu

須磨の海女の塩焼き衣の慣れなばか
一日も君を忘れて思はむ

Roma-ji: Suma no ama no shioyakiginu no nare naba ka hitohi mo kimi o wasurete omowamu
English Translation: Suma's fisher girls,
their robes for burning salt—
were I used to you,
might I then, for even a day,
forget you in my thoughts?
Meaning: If I had grown used to you, as the Suma fisher girls grow used to the robes they wear for burning salt, might I forget you for even a single day? Never.
Commentary: Book Six Miscellaneous Poems 947

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "One envoy"
This love poem says that were the poet as familiar with his beloved as the fisher girls of Suma are with their worn salt-burning robes, it might be otherwise, but as it is he could never forget her for a single day. The long poem immediately before it (946) is titled "A poem composed by Yamabe no Sukune Akahito when passing the bay of Minume," and, through the deep-sea sea pine and nanoriso weed of that bay, tells of the pain of longing to meet the beloved while holding back even from sending a messenger for fear of gossip.
Taking up the long poem's frustration at being unable to meet, this envoy uses a concrete object from the life of the shore to say that precisely because the lovers have not yet met often enough to grow familiar, the beloved can never be forgotten even for a moment. The left note reads, "The year and month of composition of the above poems are unknown, but they are placed here because they are of the same kind." Though its date is uncertain, it is arranged here as one of the poems about travel along the shores of Harima.
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 "salt-burning robes" of this poem, like "boiling seaweed for salt" in 935 and "people in great numbers boiling salt" in 938 of this book, bring in the salt-making of the shore, carrying on a scene common to the poems of travel along the coasts of Harima and Settsu.
The first line, "Suma's fisher girls," names the fisher girls of Suma in Settsu, who fished and made salt along the shore. Suma corresponds to today's Suma Ward in Kōbe. It runs to six syllables, a hypermetric line.
The second line, "their robes for burning salt," refers to the rough garments worn for the work of boiling salt. The first two lines form an introductory phrase leading to "nare," the softening of clothes worn until they cling to the body.
The third line, "were I used to you," means "if I had grown familiar with you." In "nare" the sense of a garment worn soft overlaps with that of growing intimate with a person. "Ka" is a rhetorical binding particle, concluded by "omowamu" in the final line.
The fourth line, "might I then, for even a day," means "for even a single day," the particle "mo" stressing the briefness of one day.
The final line, "forget you in my thoughts?" means "could I ever forget you? Never," concluding the rhetorical question begun by "ka" in the third line. This rhetorical turn conveys the strength of the feeling that forgetting is impossible.
Author: Yamabe no Akahito
Source: Manyoshu
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