Tōki imo ga furisake mitsutsu shinouramu kono tsuki no omo ni kumo na tanabiki

遠き妹が振り放け見つつ偲ふらむ
この月の面に雲なたなびき

Roma-ji: Tōki imo ga furisake mitsutsu shinouramu kono tsuki no omo ni kumo na tanabiki
English Translation: My love so far off
will be gazing up at it,
thinking now of me;
upon the face of this moon
clouds, do not trail across it
Meaning: My love far away must be gazing up at this moon and thinking of me; clouds, do not trail across its face.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2460

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
The distant beloved must be looking up at the same moon right now and thinking of the speaker, so the speaker begs the clouds not to cover its face: a love poem. Through the idea that one moon links two people far apart, it conveys the aching heart of someone on a journey thinking of a wife at home.
A series of poems on the moon begins here. Moon poems continue through poem 2464 of this book; this one wishes the moon not to be hidden by clouds, while poem 2464 laments a crescent moon unseen behind clouds, so that the relation of cloud and moon is reversed between the beginning and end of the series.
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, "tōki imo ga": "my love who is far away." The line has six syllables, one too many (jiamari).
Second line, "furisake mitsutsu": "gazing up into the distance." "Furisake miru" means to look up at something far off, and "tsutsu" marks continuation.
Third line, "shinouramu": "she must be longing for me." It is the attributive form of the present conjectural "ramu," modifying "tsuki" (moon) in the fourth line, imagining what the faraway beloved is doing now.
Fourth line, "kono tsuki no omo ni": "on the face of this moon." The line has eight syllables, one too many, and "kono" (this) shows that the moon the speaker sees now is the same one the beloved sees.
Fifth line, "kumo na tanabiki": "clouds, do not trail." The adverb "na" with the continuative form of the verb makes a prohibition, an old form from ancient Japanese.
Author: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Collection
Source: Manyoshu
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