Miyoshino no migumaga suge o amanaku ni kari nomi karite midaritemu to ya

み吉野の水隈が菅を編まなくに
刈りのみ刈りて乱りてむとや

Roma-ji: Miyoshino no migumaga suge o amanaku ni kari nomi karite midaritemu to ya
English Translation: The sedge that grows
in the river bends of Yoshino,
though you weave it not,
you cut and cut and only cut;
will you leave it all in tangles?
Meaning: The sedge that grows in the bends of the Yoshino River: though you do not weave it, you only cut and cut, and do you mean to leave it lying in a tangle?
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2837

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Metaphorical Poems"
Cutting and cutting the sedge from the bends of the Yoshino River without weaving it into a hat, does he mean to leave it lying in a tangle? So a woman reproaches her lover. Likening herself to cut sedge, she voices resentment at a man who has made her his but will not take her as a wife, and grief at the turmoil he leaves in her heart.
By the left note "the four poems above express feelings through grasses," this is the third of four poems on grasses. Like the preceding poem it sings of sedge, but where that poem gave the feelings of one waiting for the sedge to grow, this one gives those of the sedge cut and left lying, so that the arrangement sets the one who waits against the one kept waiting through the same sedge.
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, "miyoshino no": "of fair Yoshino." "Mi" is an honorific prefix, and Yoshino, in present-day Yoshino District, Nara Prefecture, calls to mind the flowing Yoshino River.
Second line, "migumaga suge o": "the sedge of the river bends," growing where the current curves inward. Sedge is woven into hats, and here it stands for the speaker herself.
Third line, "amanaku ni": "though you do not weave it." "Naku ni" is the nominalized form of the negative "zu" plus "ni," and weaving a hat stands for taking her as a wife.
Fourth line, "kari nomi karite": "only cutting and cutting." Repeating the same verb around "nomi" stresses the man's treatment of her, cutting and then leaving her be.
Fifth line, "midaritemu to ya": "do you mean to leave it in a tangle?" "Midaru" here is a quadrigrade verb meaning to put in disorder, "temu" joins the irrealis of the perfective "tsu" to the conjectural "mu," and after "to ya" a word such as "you think" is left unsaid as she presses him.
Source: Manyoshu
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