Omoiki ya shiji no hashigaki kakitsumete momoyo mo onaji marone sen to wa - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

思ひきや榻の端書きかきつめて
百夜も同じ丸寝せんとは

Roma-ji: Omoiki ya shiji no hashigaki kakitsumete momoyo mo onaji marone sen to wa
English Translation: Who could have thought it?
That after marking the shaft-rest
night by night, the count
of a hundred nights, I'd sleep
still alone, in all my clothes?
Meaning: Who would ever have thought it: that after marking the carriage shaft-rest night after night, I would sleep alone in my clothes, the same for a hundred nights?
Commentary: Book Twelve Love Poems II 779

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Composed on the topic 'Love that breaks its promise as the hour arrives' at the courtiers' poetry contest at the Hōjūji Palace"
Composed at the same courtiers' contest at the Hōjūji Palace as the preceding poem, on the topic "Love that breaks its promise as the hour arrives." Did I ever think, he says, that after gathering marks on the shaft-rest I would sleep alone in my clothes for a hundred nights? It draws on a tale handed down in poetic treatises and elsewhere, of a man told by a woman that she would meet him if he came for a hundred nights, who marked the shaft-rest of his carriage each time he came, yet failed just before the promised night. Like the man of that tale, he keeps coming only to have the promise broken, piling up nights of sleeping alone in his clothes, a lament of love whose promises are broken.
The author, "Shunzei, Master of the Empress Dowager's Household," was the son of Provisional Middle Counselor Fujiwara no Toshitada. He served as Master of the Empress Dowager's Household, later took the tonsure under the name Shakua, and compiled this anthology at the command of Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa.
This poem closes the second book of love, the last of three poems on the same topic as those before it. Poem 703 at the end of Book Eleven is also by the compiler Shunzei, so that both the first and second books of love close with poems by the compiler. Where 704 at the head of this book sang of a love whose vow is never bound, "musubanu mizu," this final poem sings of a love that ends in sleeping alone even after a hundred nights, so that the beginning and end of the book answer each other in unfulfilled love. The first line, "omoiki ya," is the same as in 756 of this book.

First line, "omoiki ya": "ki" is the past auxiliary and "ya" rhetorical, "did I ever think? Never." The poem pauses here and stands in inverted order with the last line. Poem 756 of this book opens with the same line.
Second line, "shiji no hashigaki": "shiji" is the stand on which the shafts of an ox carriage rest, drawing on the tale of marking on its edge the number of nights one had come.
Third line, "kakitsumete": "writing them up together," layering "kaku," "to write," through "hashigaki" in the second line.
Fourth line, "momoyo mo onaji": "the same even for a hundred nights," taking up the hundred nights of courtship in the tale.
Fifth line, "marone sen to wa": "marone" is sleeping alone in one's clothes, and "n" is the conjectural "mu," "that I would sleep so," returning to "omoiki ya" in the first line.
Author: Fujiwara no Shunzei
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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