Ame no umi ni kumo no nami tachi tsuki no fune hoshi no hayashi ni kogi kakuru miyu

天の海に雲の波立ち月の舟
星の林に漕ぎ隠る見ゆ

Roma-ji: Ame no umi ni kumo no nami tachi tsuki no fune hoshi no hayashi ni kogi kakuru miyu
English Translation: In the sea of heaven
the waves of cloud are rising,
and the moon's boat
into the forest of stars
is seen rowing out of sight
Meaning: On the sea of the sky the waves of cloud are rising, and I watch the moon's boat row on until it hides within the forest of stars.
Commentary: Book Seven Miscellaneous Poems 1068

Headnote: "On the Heavens"
Likening the night sky to a sea, the clouds to waves, the moon to a boat, and the crowded stars to a forest, this poem depicts the moon slipping away among the stars. Treating the movement of the heavens as a voyage, it is a grand conceit and is known as one of the most imaginative descriptive poems in the Man'yōshū.
It is the opening poem of Book Seven, set at the head of the Miscellaneous Poems under the heading "On the Heavens." A group of poems "On the Moon" follows, so that the arrangement narrows its focus from the whole sky to the moon.
The left note says the poem comes from the Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Collection. Whether it is Hitomaro's own work or a poem he recorded remains undetermined.

The first line, "In the sea of heaven," likens the vast sky to the sea. The metaphors that follow, the waves of cloud, the moon's boat and the forest of stars, form a consistent series, so that the whole poem is built as a scene on a celestial sea.
The second line, "the waves of cloud are rising," sees the clouds spreading across the sky as waves rising on the sea. The continuative form "tachi" carries the sentence on into the third line.
The third line, "the moon's boat," pictures the moon as a boat crossing the night sky. Poem 1295 in this book (a sedōka) also has "the moon's boat sets out," and poem 2223 in Book Ten speaks of floating the moon's boat on the sea of heaven, showing how familiar the idea of a moon voyaging across the sky was to the poets of the age.
The fourth line, "into the forest of stars," likens the clustering, glittering stars to a forest. The pairing of a forest with the sea is striking, and it shows the moon entering the stars as a boat disappears behind a wooded island.
The final line, "is seen rowing out of sight," means that the moon's boat can be seen rowing on until it vanishes into the forest of stars. Closing with "miyu" (is seen) completes the conceit as a scene before the poet's eyes.
Source: Manyoshu
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