Wakarete mo mata mo aubeku omooeba kokoro midarete are koime ya mo

別れてもまたも逢ふべく思ほえば
心乱れて我れ恋ひめやも

Roma-ji: Wakarete mo mata mo aubeku omooeba kokoro midarete are koime ya mo
English Translation: Were it that we'd meet
once again though we have parted,
if I could but think so,
would my heart be thrown in turmoil,
would I long for you like this?
Meaning: If I could believe that we would meet again even after parting, would my heart be in such turmoil, would I long for you like this?
Commentary: Book Nine Elegies 1805

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "A poem composed in grief at the death of a younger brother, with tanka"; envoy
If he could believe they would meet again after parting, the speaker says, he would not long for his brother in such turmoil. Through a rhetorical question, the poem forcefully expresses the despair of a parting by death, unlike any parting in life.
This is the envoy to the long poem 1804 in this book. The long poem says that the younger brother, raised as his parents made him, had a life as fleeting as the morning dew; unable to resist the will of the gods, he has departed to the land of the dead, so that the speaker wanders as in a dark night, weeps without knowing night from day, and grieves with a heart as if on fire. The text notes a variant reading the fourth line as "heart worn out."
The author, Tanabe no Sakimaro, was a poet of the mid-Nara period, a clerk in the Office of Sake Brewing who served Tachibana no Moroe. This poem is taken from the Sakimaro Collection, and it is widely held to be his own work.

The first line, "were it that we'd meet," introduces parting.
The second line, "once again though we have parted," imagines reunion.
The third line, "if I could but think so," sets up a counterfactual.
The fourth line, "would my heart be thrown in turmoil," echoes the long poem's "my thoughts in disarray"; the variant has "heart worn out."
The final line, "would I long for you like this?" is rhetorical, with me, the realis of mu, and yamo.
Author: Tanabe no Sakimaro (from the Sakimaro Collection)
Source: Manyoshu
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