Miminashi no ike shi urameshi wagimoko ga kitsutsu kazukaba mizu wa karenamu

耳成の池し恨めし我妹子が
来つつ潜かば水は涸れなむ

Roma-ji: Miminashi no ike shi urameshi wagimoko ga kitsutsu kazukaba mizu wa karenamu
English Translation: O Miminashi,
how bitter your pond to me!
When my darling came
to sink beneath your waters,
would your waters had run dry.
Meaning: How bitter I feel toward the pond of Miminashi! When my darling came to sink beneath it, its waters should have dried up.
Commentary: Book Sixteen Poems with Tales of Origin and Miscellaneous Poems 3788

Headnote: "Another tale says: long ago three men courted the same maiden. She sighed and said, 'A woman's life is as easily lost as dew, and the hearts of three men are as hard to soften as stone.' At last she wandered by a pond and sank beneath its waters. The young men could not bear their sorrow, and each set down his feelings in a poem; three poems. [The maiden was called Kazurako.]"
The poet resents the Miminashi pond where the maiden drowned herself, wishing its water had dried up when she came to sink in it. His helpless regret at failing to stop her death is hurled at the pond as reproach.
According to the headnote, the maiden courted by three men compared her life to dew and their hearts to stone, and sank herself in a pond. The Miminashi pond is said to have lain at the foot of Mount Miminashi, one of the three hills of Yamato.
The poets are the three young men who courted Kazurako; their names are not recorded. Introduced as "another tale," the story is set beside the Sakurako pair, so that a tale of two suitors is matched by one of three.

First line, "Miminashi no ike shi," names the pond at the foot of Mount Miminashi. The emphatic particle shi singles it out as the target of his resentment.
Second line, "urameshi," means "how bitter," and the poem breaks after the second line. The feeling is stated at the outset, and the lines that follow give the reason.
Third line, "wagimoko ga," means "my darling." Unlike the cherry of the two preceding poems, the name is withheld here and revealed in the following poems as kazura.
Fourth line, "kitsutsu kazukaba," means "if she came and sank beneath the water." Kazuku means to dive or sink, referring to her drowning.
Final line, "mizu wa karenamu," means "the water should have dried up." The perfective nu with the conjectural mu voices a strong wish for what did not happen.
Source: Manyoshu
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