Mikanohara kuni no miyako wa arenikeri ōmiyabito no utsuroinureba

三香の原久迩の都は荒れにけり
大宮人のうつろひぬれば

Roma-ji: Mikanohara kuni no miyako wa arenikeri ōmiyabito no utsuroinureba
English Translation: On Mika's plain,
the capital of Kuni
has fallen to ruin,
for the courtiers of the palace
have all moved away from here
Meaning: On the plain of Mika, the capital of Kuni has fallen to ruin, for the courtiers of the great palace have moved away.
Commentary: Book Six Miscellaneous Poems 1060

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Two envoys"
The poem says that the Kuni capital on the plain of Mika has fallen to ruin because the courtiers have moved away. The long poem immediately before it (1059) is titled "A poem composed on a spring day in grief and sorrow over the ruins at Mika-no-hara"; it laments that the Kuni capital, once called a good place to live for its high mountains and pure river shallows, has become an old village where no one comes and the houses lie in ruin, closing, "how I regret that this pleasant village has fallen to ruin." This envoy states the ruin of the capital and its cause concisely by means of inversion.
In Tenpyō 16 (744) Naniwa was declared the imperial capital, and in the following year, Tenpyō 17 (745), the capital was returned to Heijō; thereafter Kuni fell into ruin as a capital its people had abandoned.
The twenty-one poems from 1047 through 1067, the last poem of the book, are covered by the closing left note: "The above twenty-one poems appear in the Tanabe no Sakimaro Collection." According to this note they were taken from the Tanabe no Sakimaro Collection, and they are thought to be Sakimaro's own compositions.
The poet, Tanabe no Sakimaro, was a poet of the mid-Nara period; in Tenpyō 20 (748) he served as a clerk of the Office of Sake Brewing and acted as an envoy for the Minister of the Left, Tachibana no Moroe. He is regarded as one of the representative poets of the last phase of the Man'yōshū, carrying on the tradition of ceremonial long poems at court.

This poem opens with the same "On Mika's plain" as 1051, an envoy praising the new capital at Kuni, while reversing praise into ruin. The capital once praised with "for a hundred ages it shall grow ever more divine" (1052) and "only should it fail would this site of the great palace ever shift and move away" (1054) has here truly moved away. It also corresponds to 1048 and 1049, which lament the ruins of Nara, forming a composition in which both the Nara capital and the Kuni capital fall to ruin.
The first line, "On Mika's plain," names the plain where the Kuni capital stood, opening with the same phrase as the envoy in praise of the new capital.
The second line, "the capital of Kuni," singles out with "wa" the object of the lament.
The third line, "has fallen to ruin," means "how it has gone to ruin." "Ni" is the perfective auxiliary "nu" and "keri" expresses exclamation; the sense breaks here, making this a poem with a pause after the third line.
The fourth line, "for the courtiers of the palace," refers to the people who served at court, those who have left the capital.
The final line, "have all moved away from here," means "because they have moved away," an inversion that supplies afterward the reason for the ruin in the third line. It takes up the same word "utsurou" as "when I see it fading" in 1045 and "ever shift and move away" in 1054, concluding the series of words lamenting the shifting of capitals.
Author: Tanabe no Sakimaro
Source: Manyoshu
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