Akenu beku chidori shiba naku shirotae no kimi ga tamakura imada akanaku ni

明けぬべく千鳥しば鳴く白栲の
君が手枕いまだ飽かなくに

Roma-ji: Akenu beku chidori shiba naku shirotae no kimi ga tamakura imada akanaku ni
English Translation: As though dawn would break
the plovers cry and cry again;
yet of your arm, white
as mulberry cloth, for pillow
I have not yet had my fill
Meaning: The plovers keep crying as if the dawn will soon break, and yet I have not had my fill of resting my head on your arm.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2807

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
The plovers cry again and again as if to announce the coming dawn, yet the speaker has not had her fill of resting on her lover's arm; this is a woman's poem regretting the morning of parting. Her lament at the shortness of their time together and her resentment of the dawn are expressed frankly.
This is one of the sequence set upon birds, taking up the plover as a bird that tells of daybreak. Where poem 2800 tells of the cock's cry announcing dawn after a night of sleeping alone, this poem tells of the plovers' cry ending a night spent together, so the same dawn birds are treated from both sides, sleeping alone and sleeping together.
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, "akenu beku": "as if dawn would break." "Nu" is the perfective auxiliary and "beku" the continuative form of the conjectural "beshi," conveying the urgency of a dawn about to arrive.
Second line, "chidori shiba naku": "the plovers cry again and again." "Shiba" means repeatedly, and a pause falls after the second line.
Third line, "shirotae no": from the sense of white mulberry cloth, a pillow word attached to sleeves, robes, and an arm used as a pillow; here it leads into "tamakura."
Fourth line, "kimi ga tamakura": "pillowing on your arm." "Kimi" is a woman's word for a man, showing that this is a woman's poem.
Fifth line, "imada akanaku ni": "though I have not yet had my fill." "Aku" means to be fully satisfied, and "naku ni" is the nominalized form of the negative "zu" followed by "ni." The lines from the third on stand in inverted order to the first two, closing the poem with an unending reluctance to part.
Source: Manyoshu
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