Shikitae no makura o makite imo to are to nuru yo wa nakute toshi zo henikeru

敷栲の枕をまきて妹と我れと
寝る夜はなくて年ぞ経にける

Roma-ji: Shikitae no makura o makite imo to are to nuru yo wa nakute toshi zo henikeru
English Translation: On pillows spread fine
laying our heads side by side,
my dear girl and I
have had no night of sleeping,
and a whole year has gone by
Meaning: With never a night when my beloved and I slept with our heads on the same pillow, a year has slipped away.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2615

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing One's Feelings Directly"
Without a single night when he and his beloved lay together on one pillow, the years have passed: this is a love poem of lament. Looking back on a love that cannot meet not night by night but in the measure of years, it loads the pain of love with the weight of time piled up.
The opening line, "shikitae no," is the same as in poem 2607 of this book, and "makite" in the second line, like "tamakura makinemeya" in poem 2611, is a word for the pillow of shared sleep. Where the preceding poem, 2614, and its variants rejoice in meeting someone long yearned for, this poem laments years gone by without meeting, an arrangement of contrast.
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, "shikitae no": a pillow word attached to pillows, robes and sleeves, here to "makura" in the second line.
Second line, "makura o makite": "laying our heads on the pillow." "Maki" is from "maku," to use as a pillow, and the line evokes a shared bed.
Third line, "imo to are to": "my beloved and I." This line has six syllables, one more than the norm, and by naming the two together it pictures them sleeping side by side.
Fourth line, "nuru yo wa nakute": "with no night of sleeping together." The particle "wa" singles this out, stressing that there was not even one such night.
Fifth line, "toshi zo henikeru": "a year has passed." The emphatic particle "zo" is answered by "keru," the attributive form of the exclamatory auxiliary "keri," in a kakari-musubi construction, and with the perfective "ni" it voices the grief of finding that a year has gone.
Source: Manyoshu
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