Ki no umi no nataka no ura ni yosuru nami otodakaki kamo awanu ko yue ni

紀の海の名高の浦に寄する波
音高きかも逢はぬ子ゆゑに

Roma-ji: Ki no umi no nataka no ura ni yosuru nami otodakaki kamo awanu ko yue ni
English Translation: Off the sea of Ki
to the bay of Nataka
the waves roll ashore:
how loud the rumors are sounding
for a girl I have not met
Meaning: Like the waves rolling in to Nataka Bay on the sea of Ki, how loud the rumors are, all for a girl I have never met.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2730

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
As the waves that roll into Nataka Bay on the sea of Ki sound loudly, the gossip rises high over a girl the speaker has not yet even met. The poem conveys the gap between the frustration of a love not yet consummated and the size of an empty rumor.
As a poem expressing feelings through things, it speaks through the sound of waves at Nataka Bay. The place name "Nataka," "high name," is made to resonate with "otodakaki," "loud-sounding." The motif of rumor without meeting is the same as in "au to wa nashi ni" in poem 2726 of this book, and unlike the welcome of rumor in the preceding poem, this one laments it.
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, "Ki no umi no": "of the sea of Ki," the province of Kii.
Second line, "nataka no ura ni": "at Nataka Bay." Nataka is a place in Kainan, Wakayama Prefecture, and its name echoes "otodakaki" in the fourth line.
Third line, "yosuru nami": "the waves rolling in." The lines up to here form a preface, leading from the sound of the waves to "otodakaki."
Fourth line, "otodakaki kamo": "how loud it sounds." "Oto" means both the sound of the waves and the talk of the world, and "kamo" is exclamatory; the poem breaks here.
Fifth line, "awanu ko yue ni": "for a girl I have not met." "Yue ni" marks the cause, and its inversion with the fourth line heightens the emptiness of the rumor.
Source: Manyoshu
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