Momoyo shimo chiyo shimo ikite arame yamo aga omō imo o okite nagekamu

百代しも千代しも生きてあらめやも
我が思ふ妹を置きて嘆かむ

Roma-ji: Momoyo shimo chiyo shimo ikite arame yamo aga omō imo o okite nagekamu
English Translation: For a hundred years,
for a thousand, could we live
on and on? Not so;
then my love, the one I hold dear,
shall I leave her and only grieve?
Meaning: Could one live for a hundred years, or a thousand? No. Shall I then leave the beloved I long for and do nothing but grieve?
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2600

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing One's Feelings Directly"
Since no one lives a hundred or a thousand years, the speaker asks whether he should go on grieving without meeting the wife he loves, urging himself to meet her in view of how short life is. Awareness of a limited life stirs his heart to go to her.
Poem 2592 of this book likewise says that nothing comes of dying of love and that the speaker wants to meet the beloved while alive, treating the same theme as this poem in seeking a meeting because life is limited.
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, "momoyo shimo": "for a hundred years." "Shimo" is an emphatic particle stressing the long span of time.
Second line, "chiyo shimo ikite": "living a thousand years." It repeats the "shimo" of the first line, enlarging the span from a hundred to a thousand years.
Third line, "arame yamo": "could one go on living? No." "Me yamo" is the conjectural "mu" in its realis form with "ya" and "mo," a rhetorical question, and the sense breaks after the third line.
Fourth line, "aga omō imo o": "the beloved I think of." It clearly names the one he longs for.
Fifth line, "okite nagekamu": "shall I leave her and grieve?" "Okite" means to leave as is, and "mu," following the rhetorical tone of the third line, is taken to mean "should I only grieve?"
Source: Manyoshu
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