Nagatsuki no ariake no tsuki no aritsutsu mo kimi shi kimasaba ware koime ya mo - Shui Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

長月の有明の月のありつつも
君し来まさば我恋ひめやも

Roma-ji: Nagatsuki no ariake no tsuki no aritsutsu mo kimi shi kimasaba ware koime ya mo
English Translation: Like the dawn moon of
the long month of autumn, still
remaining unchanged,
if you would but come to me,
would I long for you like this?
Meaning: If you kept coming to me, unchanging like the dawn moon of the Ninth Month, would I long for you so? Surely not.
Commentary: Book Thirteen Love Poems III 795

Headnote: "Topic unknown"
The poem says that if the beloved kept coming, unchanging like the dawn moon of the Ninth Month, one would not long so desperately. Laying the dawn moon that lingers in the sky until daybreak over a lover who visits without fail, it uses a rhetorical question to protest the pain of visits that have ceased.
The author, "Hitomaro," is Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, a court poet of the Asuka period revered as the sage of poetry and the foremost poet of the Man'yōshū, and one of the Thirty-Six Immortal Poets. Many Man'yōshū poems are included in the Shūishū under Hitomaro's name.
A similar poem is included in Book Ten of the Man'yōshū.

First line, "nagatsuki no," means "of the Ninth Month" of the lunar calendar.
Second line, "ariake no tsuki no," means "like the moon lingering at dawn." "ariake" echoes "aritsutsu" in the third line, so the first two lines form a preface leading to "aritsutsu."
Third line, "aritsutsu mo," means "remaining unchanged."
Fourth line, "kimi shi kimasaba," means "if you would come," with "shi" an emphatic particle and "masa" the irrealis form of the honorific auxiliary "masu." It shares "kimasu" with the second line of 833, "kimasanu yoi no."
Final line, "ware koime ya mo," means "would I long so? no, I would not," with "ya mo" rhetorical.
Author: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Source: Shui Wakashu
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