Ko no ma yori utsurou tsuki no kage o oshimi tachimotōru ni sayo fuke ni keri

木の間より移ろふ月の影を惜しみ
立ち廻るにさ夜更けにけり

Roma-ji: Ko no ma yori utsurou tsuki no kage o oshimi tachimotōru ni sayo fuke ni keri
English Translation: Through the gaps in the trees
the moon goes drifting onward;
loath to lose its light,
I wandered to and fro until
the night had grown deep and late
Meaning: Loath to lose the light of the moon drifting between the trees, I wandered back and forth, and before I knew it the night had grown late.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2821

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Questions and Answers"
Loath to lose the light of the moon moving between the trees, the speaker wanders to and fro until the night grows late. It tells of time slipping away while the heart lingers over the beauty of the moon, and so takes the form of explaining to the other why the visit came so late.
Placed in the category "Questions and Answers," this poem is paired by the left note "the two poems above" with the preceding poem, 2820, as its answer. Where that poem vowed to wait for the beloved until the moon that rose late in the night should sink, this one takes up the same moon and the same late hour to explain why the other was kept waiting. The one who waits and the one who keeps another waiting face each other across a single moonlit night.
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, "ko no ma yori": "through the gaps in the trees." "Yori" marks the route, evoking moonlight filtering through branches and leaves.
Second line, "utsurou tsuki no": "the moon that drifts on." "Utsurou" adds the continuative "fu" to "utsuru," showing the moon gradually changing its place across the sky; it answers the preceding poem's "until the moon that rose should sink" with the moon's passage.
Third line, "kage o oshimi": "because its light is precious." "Kage" means light, and the pattern "noun + o + adjective stem + mi" expresses a reason. The line has six syllables, one in excess.
Fourth line, "tachimotōru ni": "while wandering back and forth." "Ni" shows that things moved on in the meantime.
Fifth line, "sayo fuke ni keri": "the night has grown late." "Sa" is a prefix, and "ni keri" joins the perfective "nu" to the exclamatory "keri," voicing the realization that the night has deepened; it answers the preceding poem's "sayo fukete" with the same words.
Source: Manyoshu
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