Warinashi ya omou kokoro no iro naraba kore zo sore to mo iwamashi mono o - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

わりなしや思ふ心の色ならば
これぞそれとも言はましものを

Roma-ji: Warinashi ya omou kokoro no iro naraba kore zo sore to mo iwamashi mono o
English Translation: How hopeless it is:
were the heart that holds this love
a color to be seen,
"This is it, this very one,"
I could say, and show it you
Meaning: How hopeless this is. If only the heart that loves had a color, I could point to it and say, "This, this is my love."
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems I 643

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Composed on the topic 'The Beginning of Love' when hundred-poem sequences were presented in the reign of Emperor Horikawa"
Like the two preceding poems, composed on the topic "The beginning of love" for the Horikawa sequences. How hopeless, she says: if the loving heart were a color, I could say, "This is it." Supposing that the heart had a color, she expresses the frustration of having no way to show the unseen love to its object.
The author, "Kawachi," was a lady-in-waiting who served a former Ise Priestess. She was one of the poets of the Horikawa sequences, and little is known of her life.
This is the third poem in the sequence. The idea of speaking of love through "color" appears also in "iro ni ideji" in 646 and "iro mienu kokoro no hodo" in 688 of this book.

First line, "warinashi ya": "warinashi" means unreasonable or helpless, and "ya" is exclamatory. The poem pauses here.
Second line, "omou kokoro no": "my heart that loves."
Third line, "iro naraba": "if it were a color," a supposition that likens the unseen heart to a color. It contrasts with "iro mienu" in the first line of 688.
Fourth line, "kore zo sore to mo": "that this very thing is my love."
Fifth line, "iwamashi mono o": "mashi" is the counterfactual auxiliary, answering "naraba" in the third line. "Mono o" carries an adversative sigh, "I could say it, yet."
Author: Kawachi
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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