Sugashima no natsumi no ura ni yosuru nami aida mo okite wa ga omowanaku ni

酢蛾島の夏身の浦に寄する波
間も置きて我が思はなくに

Roma-ji: Sugashima no natsumi no ura ni yosuru nami aida mo okite wa ga omowanaku ni
English Translation: As the waves roll in
to the bay of Natsumi
at Suga Island,
with pauses in between them,
it is not so that I love
Meaning: Like the waves that roll in to Natsumi Bay on Suga Island, it is not with pauses in between that I think of you.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2727

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
The waves that come in to Natsumi Bay on Suga Island arrive with pauses between them, but the speaker's love has no such pauses; it never ceases. By turning the intervals of the breaking waves on their head, the poem stresses an unbroken love.
As a poem expressing feelings through things, it speaks through waves breaking on a shore. Its play on the "intervals" of waves continues in "aida naku" in poems 2736 and 2737 of this book and "aida aramu" in poem 2741, forming a group of poems that measure the depth of love by whether the waves have gaps or not.
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, "sugashima no": "of Suga Island." It is most often taken as Sugashima in Toba, Mie Prefecture; the original script writes the name with phonetic characters.
Second line, "natsumi no ura ni": "at Natsumi Bay." It is thought to be a bay on Suga Island, though its exact location is uncertain.
Third line, "yosuru nami": "the waves rolling in." The lines up to here form a preface, leading from the pauses between incoming and receding waves to "aida," "interval."
Fourth line, "aida mo okite": "leaving any gap." The particle "mo" singles out even the slightest pause in order to deny it.
Fifth line, "wa ga omowanaku ni": "it is not that I love so." "Naku ni" is the nominalized form of the negative "zu" followed by "ni"; with deep feeling, it leaves unsaid the plea that the speaker loves without ceasing.
Source: Manyoshu
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