Shio miteba minawa ni ukabu manago ni mo wa wa narite shika koi wa shinazute

潮満てば水泡に浮かぶ真砂にも
我はなりてしか恋ひは死なずて

Roma-ji: Shio miteba minawa ni ukabu manago ni mo wa wa narite shika koi wa shinazute
English Translation: When the tide comes in,
like the grains of sand that float
in the foaming spray
so would I become, and not
die of longing as I do
Meaning: I would rather become the fine sand that floats in the foam when the tide comes in, than die of love.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2734

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
When the tide comes in, fine sand floats and drifts with the foam; the speaker would rather become such sand than die of longing. Wishing to be something as fleeting as drifting sand shows how far the pain of love has gone.
As a poem expressing feelings through things, it speaks through fine sand floating in the foam. Following the preceding poem's wish to become a rocky shore, this one wishes to become fine sand, so two poems voice the same heart through objects of different scale, the rugged rocks and the minute grains. The wish to become something other than human also appears in Ōtomo no Tabito's "would that I could become a wine jar" in poem 343 of Book Three.
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, "shio miteba": "when the tide comes in." "Miteba" joins the realis form to the particle "ba," expressing a recurring condition: each time the tide rises.
Second line, "minawa ni ukabu": "floating in the foam."
Third line, "manago ni mo": "even fine sand." The particle "mo" conveys "at least something like that."
Fourth line, "wa wa narite shika": "I would become." "Teshika" is a final particle expressing one's own wish, and the poem breaks here.
Fifth line, "koi wa shinazute": "not dying of love." The particle "wa" singles out dying of love in order to deny it, and the line is inverted with the fourth.
Source: Manyoshu
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