Waro tabi wa tabi to omehodo ii ni shite komechi yasuramu waga mi kanashi mo

我ろ旅は旅と思ほど家にして
子持ち痩すらむ我が妻愛しも

Roma-ji: Waro tabi wa tabi to omehodo ii ni shite komechi yasuramu waga mi kanashi mo
English Translation: This journey of mine,
a journey, I tell myself,
but there at home
with the child she must grow thin,
my wife, and how dear she is
Meaning: I tell myself my journey is just a journey, but at home my wife must be growing thin caring for our child, and how dear she is to me.
Commentary: Book Twenty Frontier Guard Poems 4343

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."
I tell myself my journey is a journey, but my wife at home, growing thin with the child, is so dear: the poem thinks of the wife and child left behind. It is the seventh poem from Suruga. He can bear his own hardship, but cannot stop thinking of his wife carrying the household alone, and the feeling comes through plainly in the dialect words. Waro adds a suffix to wa, "I"; omehodo stands for omoedo, ii for ie, "home," komechi for komochi, and mi for me, "wife."
The author, Tamatsukuribe no Hirome, was a guard from Suruga; nothing more is known of him.

The first line, "waro tabi wa," "my journey," sets his own situation as the topic.
The second line, "tabi to omehodo," "though I think of it as just a journey," says he is resigned to its hardship.
The third line, "ii ni shite," "there at home," turns his thoughts to his wife and child.
The fourth line, "komechi yasuramu," with ramu, present conjecture, imagines her growing thin with the child in her care.
The closing line, "waga mi kanashi mo," uses kanashi, "dear, aching with love," ending in the exclamatory mo.
Author: Tamatsukuribe no Hirome
Source: Manyoshu
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