Kaku bakari koimu mono zo to shiramaseba tōku mo mibeku aramashi mono o

かくばかり恋ひむものぞと知らませば
遠くも見べくあらましものを

Roma-ji: Kaku bakari koimu mono zo to shiramaseba tōku mo mibeku aramashi mono o
English Translation: Had I only known
that I would come to love you
to such an extent,
I ought to have stayed afar,
gazing at you from a distance
Meaning: Had I known that I would come to love you this much, I would have kept to watching you from afar.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2372

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing One's Feelings Directly"
Had the speaker known beforehand that love would be this painful, it would have been better to keep away and only watch from afar: this poem voices regret. By imagining what would have happened had they never grown close, it expresses all the more strongly the pain of the present love.
The headnote continues from the preceding poem, "Expressing One's Feelings Directly." The opening phrase "kaku bakari" also appears in the third line of poem 2368, and in both love poems it points to the sheer weight of love's suffering. As a poem of regret built on a contrary-to-fact construction, it laments love once it has been known.
The author is unknown; according to the left note, the poem comes from the Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Collection. That collection is thought to contain both Hitomaro's own poems and poems by others that he recorded. Kakinomoto no Hitomaro was a court poet active in the reigns of Empress Jito and Emperor Monmu, and is counted among the Thirty-Six Immortal Poets.

First line, "kaku bakari": "to this extent." It modifies "koimu" in the second line, pointing to the magnitude of the present suffering.
Second line, "koimu mono zo to": "that I would come to love so." The auxiliary "mu" expresses conjecture, the particle "zo" asserts it strongly, and "to" marks what is "known" in the third line.
Third line, "shiramaseba": "if I had known." "Maseba" is the hypothetical form of the contrary-to-fact auxiliary "mashi" with "ba," and it answers to "mashi" in the last line.
Fourth line, "tōku mo mibeku": "I should have watched from afar." It expresses the feeling that it would have been enough to gaze from a distance without coming near.
Fifth line, "aramashi mono o": "it would have been better so." Taking up "maseba" in the third line, it closes the contrary-to-fact construction with "mashi," and "mono o" ends the poem with a note of regret.
Author: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Collection
Source: Manyoshu
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