Iwashiro no nonaka ni tateru musubimatsu kokoro mo tokezu mukashi omoeba - Shui Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

岩代の野中に立てる結び松
心も解けず昔思へば

Roma-ji: Iwashiro no nonaka ni tateru musubimatsu kokoro mo tokezu mukashi omoeba
English Translation: Like the tied pine tree
standing there in the fields
of Iwashiro,
my heart too will not come loose
when I think of long ago.
Meaning: Like the tied pine standing in the fields of Iwashiro, my heart stays knotted and will not come loose when I think of times long past.
Commentary: Book Fourteen Love Poems IV 854

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown"
The poem says that just as the branches of the tied pine standing in the fields of Iwashiro remain bound, so when I think of the past my heart too stays knotted and will not come undone. It lays the bound branches of the pine over a heart tied up in grief, singing of longing for a past now gone.
The tied pine of Iwashiro is said to be the one whose branches Prince Arima knotted to pray for his safe return while being escorted under suspicion of treason. The heart that mourns that tragedy is placed here, in a book of love, as a poem of a heart that cannot clear when it thinks of the past.
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 appears in Book Two of the Man'yōshū as a poem by Naga no Okimaro grieving on seeing the tied pine, with the final line "inishie omōyu."

First line, "Iwashiro no," means "of Iwashiro," a place in Kii Province known as a poetic site for its tied pine.
Second line, "nonaka ni tateru," means "standing in the middle of the fields," with "ru" the attributive of the continuative auxiliary "ri."
Third line, "musubimatsu," is a pine whose branches have been tied together; up to here forms a preface leading to "tokezu" in the fourth line. "Musubi," tying, and "toke," untying, are associated words.
Fourth line, "kokoro mo tokezu," means "my heart too will not come undone," remaining shut. It lays the bound branches of the pine over a heart that will not clear. The poem breaks here.
Final line, "mukashi omoeba," means "when I think of the past," with "ba" a fixed condition. Inverted with the fourth line, it gives afterward the reason the heart will not loosen. It joins "mukashi no hito" in 860 and "mukashi naruramu" in 850 in voicing the heart that looks back to the past, a feeling sung again and again in this book.
Author: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Source: Shui Wakashu
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