Kanashi imo o izuchi yukame to yamasuge no sogai ni neshiku ima shi kuyashimo

愛し妹をいづち行かめと山菅の
そがひに寝しく今し悔しも

Roma-ji: Kanashi imo o izuchi yukame to yamasuge no sogai ni neshiku ima shi kuyashimo
English Translation: My beloved wife—
"Where would she go?" I thought,
and like mountain sedge,
turned my back on her in sleep—
now, ah, how bitterly I rue it.
Meaning: "Where could my darling wife go?" I thought, and slept with my back turned to her like the mountain sedge—now, how bitterly I regret it.
Commentary: Book Fourteen Azuma Poems 3577

Headnote: "Elegies"
Assuming his beloved wife would never go anywhere, the singer slept with his back to her, and now that she is gone he bitterly regrets it. It is an elegy in which the remorse of a small quarrel that became an eternal parting is piercingly expressed.
This is the only elegy in Book Fourteen, and it closes the book. The left note says that the names of the lands, mountains, and rivers in the foregoing poems could not be determined, recording that the provinces of the poems from 3438 onward are unknown. Where the book opens with 3348, a scene of mooring at night on a journey, it closes with an elegy mourning a lost wife.
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, "kanashi imo o": "Kanashi" is an eastern form of "kanashiki": my dear wife.
Second line, "izuchi yukame to": "Izuchi" means where, and "me" is conjecture: where would she go? He took her for granted.
Third line, "yamasuge no": Mountain sedge, a pillow word for "sogai" because its leaves grow turned away from one another.
Fourth line, "sogai ni neshiku": "Sogai" means back to back, and "neshiku" means having slept; the same word as "sogai ni miyuru" in 3391 from Hitachi.
Final line, "ima shi kuyashimo": "Shi" intensifies: now how I regret it. As the last poem, it closes Book Fourteen on an irrevocable remorse.
Source: Manyoshu
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