Asakage ni aga mi wa narinu karakoromo suso no awazute hisashiku nareba

朝影に我が身はなりぬ韓衣
裾のあはずて久しくなれば

Roma-ji: Asakage ni aga mi wa narinu karakoromo suso no awazute hisashiku nareba
English Translation: Like a morning shadow
thin and faint my body has grown,
for like the hems
of a Korean robe that never meet,
long it is since we have met
Meaning: My body has grown as thin as a shadow in the morning light, for, like the hems of a Korean robe that never meet, it has been long since we have met.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2619

Headnote: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
Because it has been so long since they met, the speaker has wasted away like the thin, faint shadow cast by the morning sun: this is a love poem of lament. It expresses the pain of a love that cannot meet through the image of a wasted body and through a concrete object, the hems of a Korean robe that do not close in front.
The headnote "Expressing Feelings through Things" names a category of poems that voice love by speaking through objects such as robes or features of nature, and this poem is the first of that category. Here the hems of a Korean robe that do not meet are overlaid with lovers who do not meet. From the next poem, 2620, onward, poems on robes continue: an unstitched robe, a printed robe, a salt-burner's robe, and robes dyed crimson.
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, "asakage ni": "like a morning shadow." It refers to the long, thin, faint shadow cast by the morning sun, a figure for a body wasted by love.
Second line, "aga mi wa narinu": "my body has become so." "Nu" is an auxiliary of completion, and the poem breaks after this second line. The reason is given afterward in an inverted order.
Third line, "karakoromo": "a Korean robe," that is, a robe in continental style. Such robes are said to have been cut so that the hems did not overlap in front, and from this third line through "suso no" in the fourth is an introductory phrase leading to "awazu."
Fourth line, "suso no awazute": "like hems that do not meet, we have not met." "Awazu" is a pivot word meaning both that the hems do not close and that the lovers do not meet, and "zute" is the negative "zu" with the particle "te."
Fifth line, "hisashiku nareba": "because it has grown long." "Ba" after the perfective form gives a reason, supplying afterward the cause of the wasting stated in the second line.
Source: Manyoshu
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