Makebashira homete tsukureru tono no goto imase hahatoji omegawari sezu

真木柱ほめて造れる殿のごと
いませ母刀自面変はりせず

Roma-ji: Makebashira homete tsukureru tono no goto imase hahatoji omegawari sezu
English Translation: Like a lordly hall
with fine pillars of cypress
built with words of praise,
stay as you are, dear mother,
and never let your face change
Meaning: Like a house built of fine pillars with words of blessing, stay strong and unchanged, dear mother, without your face growing thin.
Commentary: Book Twenty Frontier Guard Poems 4342

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."
Like a sturdy hall built with words of blessing, stay well, dear mother, without your face changing: a poem wishing his mother good health. It is the sixth poem from Suruga. Drawing on the custom of praising the pillars when building a house, it likens his mother's well-being to a solid dwelling. Makebashira is a dialect form of makibashira, and ome of omo.
The author, Sakatabe no Obitomaro, was a guard from Suruga; nothing more is known of him.

The first line, "makebashira," names pillars of cypress or other fine timber.
The second line, "homete tsukureru," "built with words of praise," shows the custom of blessing a new house.
The third line, "tono no goto," "like a hall": the first three lines form a simile modifying imase in the fourth.
The fourth line, "imase hahatoji," uses imasu, honorific for "to be," and hahatoji, a respectful word for mother. The poem pauses here.
The closing line, "omegawari sezu," is inverted, adding the wish that her face not change.
Author: Sakatabe no Obitomaro
Source: Manyoshu
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