Waga seko o yamato e yarite matsu shidasu ashigarayama no sugi no ko no ma ka

我が背子を大和へ遣りて待つしだす
足柄山の杉の木の間か

Roma-ji: Waga seko o yamato e yarite matsu shidasu ashigarayama no sugi no ko no ma ka
English Translation: My dear one I sent
away to the land of Yamato,
and the time I wait—
is it standing on Ashigara
among the gaps of the cedars?
Meaning: Having sent my husband away to Yamato, I wait—and the waiting is like standing among the cedars of Mount Ashigara.
Commentary: Book Fourteen Azuma Poems 3363

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Sōmon (Love Exchanges)"
A woman likens the time spent waiting for her husband, sent off to Yamato, to standing among the cedars of Mount Ashigara. The loneliness of standing in a dark cedar wood merges with the unease of waiting for one who has not returned.
It is one of the Sagami poems. It shows the place of an eastern wife seeing her husband off to the capital, with a keen sense of the distance between the east and Yamato.
The poet is unknown. The Azuma uta are thought to have been sung among the people of the eastern provinces, and they are marked by plain, open-hearted expression mixed with local dialect.

First line, "waga seko o": "Seko" is a woman's intimate word for husband or lover.
Second line, "yamato e yarite": "Yarite" means having sent off: her husband has gone up to Yamato and the capital.
Third line, "matsu shidasu": "Shida" is thought to be an eastern word for time; "su" is obscure, but the phrase is read as "the time I wait."
Fourth line, "ashigarayama no": Mount Ashigara in Sagami, the mountain marking the border between east and west.
Final line, "sugi no ko no ma ka": Some see in "sugi" (cedar) a play on "sugi" (passing), the waiting time slipping by. "Ka" is exclamatory.
Source: Manyoshu
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