Omowasure dani mo e su ya to tanigirite utedomo korizu koi to iu yatsuko

面忘れだにもえすやと手握りて
打てども懲りず恋といふ奴

Roma-ji: Omowasure dani mo e su ya to tanigirite utedomo korizu koi to iu yatsuko
English Translation: Just to forget her face,
if I could manage even that,
with my clenched fist
I strike, yet it never learns,
this wretch of a thing called love
Meaning: Hoping that I might at least forget her face, I clench my fist and strike, yet it never learns its lesson, this wretch called love.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2574

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing One's Feelings Directly"
Hoping at least to forget the beloved's face, the speaker beats love with a fist, yet love never learns: this poem personifies love. Likening love to a disobedient servant who must be beaten, its exaggeration shows irritation at a love beyond control, along with the composure to turn that irritation into laughter.
It belongs to the category "Expressing One's Feelings Directly." Calling love a "yatsuko," a servant, is unusual even in the Man'yoshu, and the poem is known as a humorous love poem. The word "omowasure" also appears in poems 2533 and 2591 of this book, where the inability to forget a face is repeatedly sung as the pain of love.
The author is unknown. The anonymous poems of Book Eleven gather the love poems of people whose names have not come down to us.

First line, "omowasure": "forgetting a face." It shows the wish to forget the image of the beloved.
Second line, "dani mo e su ya to": "if only I could manage even that." "Dani" marks a bare minimum, "e" is an adverb of possibility, and "ya" marks a question.
Third line, "tanigirite": "clenching my fist." It depicts the gesture of punishing love.
Fourth line, "utedomo korizu": "though I strike it, it does not learn." The concessive "domo" tells that punishment has no effect.
Fifth line, "koi to iu yatsuko": "this wretch called love." The poem ends on a noun, likening love to a "yatsuko," a lowly servant, and so personifying it.
Source: Manyoshu
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