Ōnaraba ta ga mimu to ka mo nubatama no waga kurokami o nabikete oramu

おほならば誰が見むとかもぬばたまの
我が黒髪を靡けて居らむ

Roma-ji: Ōnaraba ta ga mimu to ka mo nubatama no waga kurokami o nabikete oramu
English Translation: Were it but lightly,
thinking who would ever look,
would I let this hair,
black as the jewels of night,
lie streaming loose as it does?
Meaning: If my love were only casual, for whom, thinking they might see, would I leave my jet-black hair streaming loose like this?
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2532

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing One's Feelings Directly"
If her feelings were shallow, for whose eyes would she leave her black hair streaming? With this rhetorical question a woman declares that she lets her hair flow for none but him. She entrusts her deep love to black hair, the emblem of a woman's beauty.
The first line, "ōnaraba," like the first line "ōroka no" of poem 2535 in this book, denies a word meaning half-heartedness in order to show true feeling, and the two poems echo each other at close range.
The author is unknown. The anonymous poems of Book Eleven gather love poems by people whose names have not come down to us.

First line, "ōnaraba": "if it were but ordinary," that is, "if my feelings were casual." It is the irrealis of "ōnari" followed by "ba," a hypothetical condition.
Second line, "ta ga mimu to ka mo": "thinking who would see." The particle "ka" marks a rhetorical question and is resolved by "oramu" in the last line; "mo" adds feeling.
Third line, "nubatama no": a pillow word attached to "black," here introducing "black hair."
Fourth line, "waga kurokami o": "my black hair."
Fifth line, "nabikete oramu": "would I keep it streaming?" "Nabiku" is here a transitive verb meaning to let stream, and the attributive form of the conjectural "mu" resolves the "ka" of the second line.
Source: Manyoshu
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