Imo ga kado yukisugi kanetsu hisakata no ame mo furanu ka so o yoshi ni semu

妹が門行き過ぎかねつひさかたの
雨も降らぬかそをよしにせむ

Roma-ji: Imo ga kado yukisugi kanetsu hisakata no ame mo furanu ka so o yoshi ni semu
English Translation: Before my love's gate
I cannot bring myself to pass;
from the far-off sky
would that the rain might fall now:
that I would make my excuse
Meaning: I cannot bring myself to walk past my beloved's gate. If only the rain would fall, I would make that my excuse to stop.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2685

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
Unable to walk past his beloved's gate, a man wishes that rain would fall so he could stop there on the pretext of sheltering. The hesitation and frustration of a man who cannot visit openly for fear of others' eyes are set down frankly.
This is part of the sequence on rain; in the preceding poem a woman recalled a man who stayed on with the rain as his excuse. Here the man himself seeks the rain as a pretext, so that the one who waits and the one who visits, memory and wish, face each other in the arrangement.
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, "imo ga kado": "my beloved's gate." "Imo" is a man's affectionate word for his love, showing that this is a man's poem.
Second line, "yukisugi kanetsu": "I cannot pass by." "Kane" expresses being unable to do something one tries to do, and the perfective "tsu" brings a pause here.
Third line, "hisakata no": a pillow word attached to "rain." Bearing the sense of heaven, it leads into words such as sky, rain, and moon.
Fourth line, "ame mo furanu ka": "would that the rain would fall." "Nu ka," the negative "zu" in its attributive form plus "ka," expresses a wish; a second pause falls here.
Fifth line, "so o yoshi ni semu": "I will make that my excuse." "So" points to the rain, "yoshi" means reason or pretext, and "mu" expresses intention.
Source: Manyoshu
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