classic waka stream

若草の新手枕をまきそめて
夜をや隔てむ憎くあらなくに
Roma-ji

Wakakusa no niitamakura o maki somete yo o ya hedatemu nikuku aranaku ni

English Translation
Young as tender grass,
this new pillow of our arms
we have just begun:
shall we let a night divide us,
when you are not hateful to me?
Meaning
Having just begun to share the new pillow of our arms, fresh as young grass, shall I let even a night come between us, when you are anything but hateful to me?
Commentary
Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2542

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing One's Feelings Directly"
Having just shared the pillow of arms for the first time, could one bear to spend even a single night apart, when the beloved is anything but hateful? So runs this love poem. Through a rhetorical question it frankly states the joy of a newly joined love and the wish never to be apart even for a moment.
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, "wakakusa no": a pillow word attached to "new," drawing on the freshness of young grass to introduce what is new.
Second line, "niitamakura o": "the new pillow of arms." "Tamakura" means using an arm as a pillow and signifies lovers sleeping together.
Third line, "maki somete": "having begun to pillow on." "Maku" means to use as a pillow.
Fourth line, "yo o ya hedatemu": "shall I let a night divide us? I shall not." The particle "ya" forms a rhetorical question resolved by the attributive of the conjectural "mu," and the poem pauses here.
Fifth line, "nikuku aranaku ni": "though you are not hateful." In the original script it is written with the numerals "two eight eighty-one," a playful spelling that borrows the multiplication-table readings "ni" and "ku ku" to write "nikuku."
Source
Manyoshu
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