Tabigoromo yae kikasanete inoredomo nao hada samushi imo ni shi araneba

旅衣八重着重ねて寐のれども
なほ肌寒し妹にしあらねば

Roma-ji: Tabigoromo yae kikasanete inoredomo nao hada samushi imo ni shi araneba
English Translation: Traveling garments
layer on layer I put on
and lie down to sleep,
still the cold gets at my skin,
for they are not my dear wife
Meaning: I lie down wearing layer upon layer of traveling clothes, yet my skin is still cold, for they are not my wife.
Commentary: Book Twenty Frontier Guard Poems 4351

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 sleep in layer upon layer of traveling clothes, yet my skin is cold, for they are not my wife: the poem sings of the loneliness of sleeping on the road. The fifth poem from Kazusa, it conveys the loneliness of not sleeping beside his wife through the bodily sense of cold. Inoredomo is a dialect form of inuredomo.
The author, Tamatsukuribe no Kunioshi, is recorded as a regular guard from Mōda District in Kazusa; nothing more is known of him.

The first line, "tabigoromo," means clothes worn on a journey.
The second line, "yae kikasanete," "putting on layer upon layer," shows him trying to keep out the cold.
The third line, "inoredomo," "though I sleep," turns concessively to the lower half.
The fourth line, "nao hada samushi," "still my skin is cold," ends the first sentence.
The closing line, "imo ni shi araneba," with the intensifier shi, adds by inversion the reason for the cold: they are not my wife.
Author: Tamatsukuribe no Kunioshi
Source: Manyoshu
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