Iso goto ni ama no tsuribune hatenikeri waga fune hatemu iso no shiranaku

磯ごとに海人の釣舟泊てにけり
我が船泊てむ磯の知らなく

Roma-ji: Iso goto ni ama no tsuribune hatenikeri waga fune hatemu iso no shiranaku
English Translation: At every rocky shore
the fishers' little boats
have all come to rest;
yet where our ship will moor
what shore, I cannot tell
Meaning: At shore after shore the fishermen's boats have all come to rest; but at which shore our own ship will moor, I do not know.
Commentary: Book Seventeen 3892

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "In the eleventh month, winter, of the second year of Tenpyō, when Lord Ōtomo, Governor-General of Dazaifu, was appointed Major Counselor (while keeping his post as before) and went up to the capital, his attendants took a separate sea route. Grieving over the journey, each set down his heart in these ten poems"
At dusk the local fishing boats have each found their rocky cove, but the travelers do not even know where their own ship will stop for the night—a poem of the loneliness of a sea voyage. In 730, when Ōtomo no Tabito, Governor-General of Dazaifu, was appointed Major Counselor and returned to the capital, his attendants traveled separately by sea and set down the sorrows of their voyage in ten poems. The fishermen with harbors to return to are set against travelers with no certain destination, bringing out the unease of drifting.
The left note records the poet's name as unknown; he was one of the attendants of Tabito who traveled to the capital by sea.

First line, "iso goto ni": "at every rocky shore." Such stony coves served as moorings for small boats.
Second line, "ama no tsuribune": the fishing boats of local fishermen, people rooted in the land.
Third line, "hatenikeri": hatsu means for a ship to reach harbor and moor; nikeri expresses completion and exclamation—"they have already moored." The poem pauses here.
Fourth line, "waga fune hatemu": "where our ship will moor"; the same verb is repeated from the third line, contrasting the boats already at rest with the ship that has no place yet.
Fifth line, "iso no shiranaku": shiranaku is the nominalized ku-form of shirazu, a trailing exclamation, "that I do not know." The unease of a journey with no visible end is gathered into this final phrase.
Source: Manyoshu
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