Masokagami te ni torimochite asanasana miredomo kimi wa aku koto mo nashi

まそ鏡手に取り持ちて朝な朝な
見れども君は飽くこともなし

Roma-ji: Masokagami te ni torimochite asanasana miredomo kimi wa aku koto mo nashi
English Translation: A clear mirror held,
taken up within my hands,
morning after morning,
though I look on you, my love,
I never tire of you
Meaning: As I take up a clear mirror in my hands and gaze into it every morning, so I see you morning after morning, and yet I never tire of you.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2502

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
Just as one takes up a mirror every morning, the speaker never tires of seeing the beloved morning after morning, expressing an unchanging love. Through an everyday gesture repeated day after day, it voices the freshness of feeling for the beloved.
Like the preceding poem it opens with "masokagami," so two poems on mirrors follow one another. Where the preceding poem seeks in dreams a beloved who cannot be met, this one sings of a partner the speaker never tires of seeing every morning, setting the grief of separation against the joy of meeting. It shares the feeling of "miredo akazaramu" (never tiring of seeing you) in poem 2500 of this book.
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, "masokagami": a clear, unclouded mirror. The poem opens with the same word as the preceding poem.
Second line, "te ni torimochite": "taking it up and holding it in my hands." The opening through this line forms a preface that, from the act of taking up a mirror to look into it, leads into "miredomo" in the fourth line.
Third line, "asanasana": "morning after morning," overlaying the morning habit of looking into the mirror with the days of seeing the beloved.
Fourth line, "miredomo kimi wa": "though I look, you." The concessive "domo" links the familiarity of seeing with never tiring of it.
Fifth line, "aku koto mo nashi": "I never tire of you." "Mo" stresses that however much the speaker looks, there is no tiring of it.
Author: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Collection
Source: Manyoshu
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