Koiwataru kyō no namida ni kurabureba kinō no sode wa nureshi mono ka wa - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

恋ひわたる今日の涙に比ぶれば
昨日の袖は濡れしものかは

Roma-ji: Koiwataru kyō no namida ni kurabureba kinō no sode wa nureshi mono ka wa
English Translation: Loving on and on,
set beside today's tears,
when they are compared,
were my sleeves of yesterday
ever truly wet at all?
Meaning: Set beside the tears I shed today, still loving on, could my sleeves of yesterday be said to have been wet at all? Surely not.
Commentary: Book Twelve Love Poems II 717

Headnote: "Composed by His Majesty on the topic 'Love that grows day by day'"
Composed by the retired emperor on the topic "Love that grows day by day." Compared with the tears I shed today, loving on, he says, were my sleeves of yesterday wet at all? Through the hyperbole that sleeves surely wet with tears yesterday seem dry beside the flood of today's tears, he expresses a love that deepens with each day.
The author, "His Majesty the Retired Emperor," refers to a poem by Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, who ordered the compilation of this anthology. The fourth son of Emperor Toba, he took the throne as the seventy-seventh emperor and long ruled as retired emperor after abdicating. He loved imayō songs and compiled the Ryōjin Hishō.
Poem 715 of this book opens with the same first line, "koiwataru." Its closing "mono ka wa" takes the same rhetorical form as "nururu mono ka wa" in the last line of 713; where 713 compared his sleeves with those of fisherfolk, this poem compares them with his own of yesterday, so that poems on wet sleeves stand together with a changing measure of comparison.

First line, "koiwataru": "loving on and on." Poem 715 of this book opens with the same line.
Second line, "kyō no namida ni": "with today's tears," paired with "kinō no sode," "yesterday's sleeves," in the fourth line.
Third line, "kurabureba": "ba" after the perfective form means "when compared."
Fourth line, "kinō no sode wa": "my sleeves of yesterday that were wet with tears," setting today against yesterday with "kyō no namida" in the second line.
Fifth line, "nureshi mono ka wa": "shi" is the attributive of the past auxiliary "ki," and "mono ka wa" is rhetorical, "could they be said to have been wet? No." It takes the same rhetorical form as "nururu mono ka wa" in the last line of 713.
Author: Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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