Kaku shite ya nao ya mamoramu ōaraki no ukita no mori no shime ni aranaku ni

かくしてやなほやまもらむ大荒木の
浮田の社の標にあらなくに

Roma-ji: Kaku shite ya nao ya mamoramu ōaraki no ukita no mori no shime ni aranaku ni
English Translation: Is it thus that still
I shall only watch and guard,
though I am not
the sacred rope of Ukita Grove
at Ōaraki?
Meaning: Must I go on like this, only watching over her still? And yet I am no sacred rope at the shrine grove of Ukita in Ōaraki.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2839

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Metaphorical Poems"
Must the speaker go on forever like this, merely watching, though he is no sacred rope stretched at the shrine grove of Ukita in Ōaraki? Likening himself to a rope that stands marking off holy ground, he voices the frustration of being able only to watch over the one he loves without laying a hand on her.
By the left note "the one poem above expresses feelings through a sacred rope," this poem uses a boundary rope as its figure. In the original text the syllable "mu" in "nao ya mamoramu" is written with the characters for "an ox lowing," a celebrated piece of playful spelling that hears the lowing of an ox as "mu."
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, "kaku shite ya": "is it thus." The particle "ya" is interrogative and is answered by "ramu" in the second line.
Second line, "nao ya mamoramu": "shall I still keep watch?" A second "ya" deepens the doubt, and "ramu," the attributive form of the auxiliary of present conjecture, closes the construction begun by the first "ya." The sense breaks off here after the second line.
Third line, "ōaraki no": a place name, the land where the Ukita shrine lies. With six syllables, the line has one in excess.
Fourth line, "ukita no mori no": "of the grove of Ukita." "Mori" means a grove where the gods descend, a shrine, and one view places it at the site of Araki Shrine in present-day Gojō City, Nara Prefecture.
Fifth line, "shime ni aranaku ni": "though I am no sacred rope." "Naku ni" is the nominalized form of the negative "zu" plus "ni," lamenting a self that can only keep watch. The line has eight syllables, one in excess.
Source: Manyoshu
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