Waga tsuma mo e ni kakitoramu itsuma mo ga tabi yuku are wa mitsutsu shinowamu

我が妻も絵に描き取らむ暇もが
旅行く我れは見つつ偲はむ

Roma-ji: Waga tsuma mo e ni kakitoramu itsuma mo ga tabi yuku are wa mitsutsu shinowamu
English Translation: My wife's likeness too,
if I had the time to draw
her in a picture!
Then as I go on my way
I could gaze and think of her
Meaning: If only I had time to paint my wife's likeness in a picture! Then, on my journey, I could look at it and think of her.
Commentary: Book Twenty Frontier Guard Poems 4327

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Poems of the frontier guards sent in rotation to the provinces of Tsukushi in the second month of Tenpyō Shōhō 7, year of the wood sheep."
If only I had time to draw my wife's likeness, so that I could gaze at it and think of her on my journey: the poem laments a hurried departure. The left note says it closes the seven poems recorded from the eighteen that the Tōtōmi escort officer Sakamoto no Hitokami presented on the sixth day of the second month, eleven clumsy ones being omitted. The idea of keeping a portrait as a keepsake is rare in the Man'yōshū, and the simple wish is stated plainly. Itsuma is a dialect form of itoma.
The author, Mononobe no Komaro, was a guard from Nagashimo District in Tōtōmi; nothing more is known of him.

The first line, "waga tsuma mo," uses mo to add "my wife's likeness too."
The second line, "e ni kakitoramu," "to draw her in a picture," imagines making a keepsake.
The third line, "itsuma mo ga," uses the wishing moga: if only I had the time. The poem pauses here.
The fourth line, "tabi yuku are wa," shows himself setting out as a guard.
The closing line, "mitsutsu shinowamu," "I would gaze and think of her," with the volitional mu.
Author: Mononobe no Komaro
Source: Manyoshu
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