classic waka stream

聞かずして黙もあらましを何しかも
君が直香を人の告げつる
Roma-ji

Kikazu shite moda mo aramashi o nani shi kamo kimi ga tadaka o hito no tsugetsuru

English Translation
Had I never heard,
I could have kept silent still—
why then, I wonder,
of how my lord has fared
did someone come to tell me?
Meaning
Had I not heard, I could have stayed silent—so why did someone have to tell me how my husband was?
Commentary
Book Thirteen Love Poems 3304

Headnote: "Envoy"
This is the envoy to the chōka (3303). She would rather have stayed silent, knowing nothing of her husband, and asks why someone had to tell her how he was. In the chōka a villager reports that the husband she longs for, riding a black horse from the sacred hill where yellow leaves scatter and crossing seven river shallows, was seen meeting someone, downcast; it is read either as news of a husband visiting another woman or, in the manner of an elegy, as a sighting of her dead husband’s spirit. The envoy frankly states the pain of having heard.
The poet is unknown. Book Thirteen is built mainly of anonymous chōka and their envoys, and many of its poems preserve the air of old songs and ritual verse.

The first line, “kikazu shite,” means “without hearing,” first voicing regret at having received the news.
In the second line, “moda” means silence, “mashi” is counterfactual and “o” a concessive sigh: “I could have stayed silent.” The poem breaks here.
The third line, “nani shi kamo,” means “why,” with “shi” emphatic and “ka” an interrogative particle governing the attributive of the closing line.
In the fourth line, “tadaka” means a person’s state or bearing, the words that conveyed her husband’s very self.
The closing line, “hito no tsugetsuru,” means “did someone tell,” with the perfective “tsu” in the attributive “tsuru” in kakari-musubi with “ka.”
Source
Manyoshu
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