Kimi ga yuku umibe no yado ni kiri tataba a ga tachi nageku iki to shirimase

君が行く海辺の宿に霧立たば
我が立ち嘆く息と知りませ

Roma-ji: Kimi ga yuku umibe no yado ni kiri tataba a ga tachi nageku iki to shirimase
English Translation: If at the shore inn
where you are going
the mist should rise,
know it for the breath I sigh
standing here in my grief
Meaning: If mist should rise over the seaside lodging where you go, know that it is the breath of my sighs as I stand here grieving.
Commentary: Book Fifteen Poems of the Envoys to Silla 3580

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "The envoys sent to Silla grieve at parting and exchange poems, express their sorrowful feelings on the sea route, and recite old poems suited to the places they pass"
The wife asks her husband to regard the mist rising on the shore of his journey as the breath of her own sighs. The idea of grieving breath becoming mist appears elsewhere in the Man'yōshū, and she hopes that, however far apart they are, her feelings will reach him. This motif of mist is taken up later in this book in 3615 and 3616, where the husband sees mist on his journey and thinks of his wife, forming a correspondence running through the whole sequence.
The first half of this book gathers the poems of the embassy sent to Silla in the eighth year of Tenpyō (736), arranged in the order of the journey from the departure at Naniwa to the return. A left note reads "the above eleven poems are an exchange," and these opening eleven poems are the parting exchanges between the envoys and their wives before departure. None of the authors is named.

First line, "kimi ga yuku": the journey her husband is about to take.
Second line, "umibe no yado ni": a temporary lodging on the beach where the ship stops along the way.
Third line, "kiri tataba": "tataba" is a hypothetical condition: if mist should rise.
Fourth line, "a ga tachi nageku": "tachi" (standing) echoes the mist "rising" (tatsu), overlaying the image of the wife standing in grief upon that of the mist rising up.
Fifth line, "iki to shirimase": "mase" is the imperative of the honorific auxiliary "masu"; she asks him to know it as her breath. In the next poem, 3581, the husband answers by taking up this "mist."
Source: Manyoshu
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