Koto toreba nageki sakidatsu kedashiku mo koto no shitabi ni tsuma ya komoreru

琴取れば嘆き先立つけだしくも
琴の下樋に妻や隠れる

Roma-ji: Koto toreba nageki sakidatsu kedashiku mo koto no shitabi ni tsuma ya komoreru
English Translation: When I take my koto,
before I play a note, I sigh—
could it be, perhaps,
that in the hollow of the koto
my dear wife lies hidden?
Meaning: Whenever I take up my koto, sighs come before the music—could it be that my wife is hiding in the hollow beneath its strings?
Commentary: Book Seven Miscellaneous Poems 1129

Headnote: "On the Yamato Koto"
The poet says that whenever he takes up his koto, a sigh rises first, and he wonders whether it is because his wife is hiding in the hollow body of the instrument. With a witty turn, it expresses how the sound of the koto stirs thoughts of a wife who has died or is far away.
It is a poem under the heading "On the Yamato Koto." The Yamato koto was a native Japanese stringed instrument, and poems taking the koto itself as their subject are rare in the Man'yōshū. The poet is unknown.

The first line, "When I take my koto," means when he takes the instrument in hand.
The second line, "before I play a note, I sigh," says that sighs come before the music, and the poem pauses here.
The third line, "kedashiku mo," is an adverb meaning "perhaps."
In the fourth line, "shitabi" means the hollow inside the koto's body.
The final line, "my dear wife lies hidden?" is a kakari-musubi construction in which "ya" is answered by the attributive "-ru," asking whether his wife is hiding there.
Source: Manyoshu
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