Omoedomo omoi mo kanetsu ashihiki no yamadori no o no nagaki kono yo o

思へども思ひもかねつあしひきの
山鳥の尾の長きこの夜を

Roma-ji: Omoedomo omoi mo kanetsu ashihiki no yamadori no o no nagaki kono yo o
English Translation: Though I think of you,
I cannot bear this longing;
like the foot-wearying
mountain pheasant's trailing tail,
long indeed is this night
Meaning: However much I think of you, I cannot bear my longing, through this night as long as the tail of the mountain pheasant.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2802

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
Through this night as long as the tail of the mountain pheasant, the speaker laments that however much one thinks of the beloved, the longing cannot be borne. The pain of love that swells through a long night of sleeping alone is expressed through the pheasant's long tail.
This is one of the poems "Expressing Feelings through Things," part of a sequence set upon birds. The preceding poem, 2801, tells of shore birds on a rocky coast, while this one takes up the mountain pheasant, a bird of the hills, so that birds of the sea and of the mountains stand side by side. Mountain pheasants were said to keep company by day but to sleep apart on separate ridges at night, and in later waka they came to suggest sleeping alone.
The left note records a poem from a certain book: "ashihiki no / yamadori no o no / shidario no / naganagashi yo o / hitori ka mo nemu." Both call up the length of the night from the pheasant's tail, but where this poem states at the outset a heart unable to bear its longing, the variant places the lament of sleeping alone in its final line.
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, "omoedomo": "though I think of you." The concessive particle "domo" shows that however much one thinks, the longing does not clear.
Second line, "omoi mo kanetsu": "I cannot bear my thoughts." "Kane" expresses being unable to do what one tries to do, and the perfective "tsu" closes the statement, bringing a pause after the second line. Repeating "omou" across the first two lines heightens a heart overflowing with longing.
Third line, "ashihiki no": a pillow word attached to "mountain"; here it leads into the "yama" of "yamadori," the mountain pheasant.
Fourth line, "yamadori no o no": "the long tail of the mountain pheasant." The third and fourth lines form a preface, the length of the tail leading into "nagaki," long.
Fifth line, "nagaki kono yo o": "this long night." The particle "o" carries a note of feeling, and placed after the pause in inverted order, the line leaves the length of the night strongly in the mind.
Source: Manyoshu
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