Ima sara ni kimi ga tamakura makinemeya waga himo no o no toketsutsu motona

今さらに君が手枕まき寝めや
我が紐の緒の解けつつもとな

Roma-ji: Ima sara ni kimi ga tamakura makinemeya waga himo no o no toketsutsu motona
English Translation: Now, after so long,
could I lie upon your arm,
pillowed there in sleep?
Yet the cords that tie my robe
come loose again, for nothing
Meaning: Now, after all this time, how could I ever sleep pillowed on your arm? And yet the cords of my robe keep coming undone, for no reason at all.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2611

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing One's Feelings Directly"
Surely now she will never again sleep pillowed on her lover's arm, and yet the cords of her robe keep coming undone: this is a love poem of lament. A cord coming loose of itself was taken as a sign that one would meet one's lover, and the poem holds both irritation that the omen keeps appearing when no meeting can come and a hope that still will not die.
Following the preceding poem, 2610, on disordered black hair, this poem tells of cords coming undone. Together with the evening divination of poem 2613 and the scratching of the eyebrows in poem 2614, poems on omens and divinations of love gather in this part of the book.
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, "ima sara ni": "now, after all this time." It voices the feeling that the moment has already passed.
Second line, "kimi ga tamakura": "your arm as a pillow." It refers to resting the head on a lover's arm in shared sleep.
Third line, "makinemeya": "could I sleep pillowed so? Surely not." "Maki" is from "maku," to use as a pillow, and "me" is the perfective form of the auxiliary "mu," forming a rhetorical question with "ya." The poem breaks after this third line.
Fourth line, "waga himo no o no": "the cords of my robe." Cords coming undone were thought to signal a coming meeting, or that the other person was thinking of one.
Fifth line, "toketsutsu motona": "keep coming loose, for nothing." "Tsutsu" marks repetition, and "motona" means pointlessly, again and again, expressing dissatisfaction that the omen appears in vain.
Source: Manyoshu
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