Takayama yu idekuru mizu no iwa ni fure kudakete zo omou imo ni awanu yo wa

高山ゆ出で来る水の岩に触れ
砕けてぞ思ふ妹に逢はぬ夜は

Roma-ji: Takayama yu idekuru mizu no iwa ni fure kudakete zo omou imo ni awanu yo wa
English Translation: From the mountain heights
water rushing forth below
strikes against the rocks:
shattered, so my heart is torn
on the nights I miss my love
Meaning: Like water rushing down from the high mountains and shattering against the rocks, my heart breaks apart with longing on the nights I cannot meet my beloved.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2716

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
As water pouring from a high mountain dashes against the rocks and breaks apart, the speaker sings that on nights without the beloved, his heart shatters into pieces with longing. Overlaying violent water on a troubled heart, the poem expresses the pain of love with force.
Expressing feelings through mountain water, the poem makes spray shattering on rocks a metaphor for a heart torn by love. The same idea of breaking apart in brooding appears in Minamoto no Shigeyuki's later poem, "kaze o itami iwa utsu nami no onore nomi kudakete mono o omou koro kana," included in the Shika Wakashū and in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu. Poem 2718, two poems later, also begins with "takayama no," continuing the poems on water flowing down from high mountains.
The author is unknown. The anonymous poems of Book Eleven gather love poems by people whose names have not been handed down.

First line, "takayama yu": "from the high mountain." "Yu" is a case particle marking a point of origin.
Second line, "idekuru mizu no": "the water that comes flowing out."
Third line, "iwa ni fure": "striking against the rocks." The lines up to here form a preface, leading from water breaking on rocks to "kudake" (shattered) in the fourth line.
Fourth line, "kudakete zo omou": "I brood as if broken to pieces." Answering the particle "zo," the verb "omou" ends in the attributive form in a kakari-musubi construction. The poem pauses here.
Fifth line, "imo ni awanu yo wa": "on nights I do not meet my beloved." Through inversion with the fourth line, it gives the time of brooding afterward. This line has an extra syllable.
Source: Manyoshu
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