Aimimu to iiwatarishi wa yukusue no mono omou koto no hashi ni zo arikeru - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

逢ひ見むと言ひわたりしは行く末の
物思ふことのはしにぞありける

Roma-ji: Aimimu to iiwatarishi wa yukusue no mono omou koto no hashi ni zo arikeru
English Translation: That I'd meet with you,
all the while I kept saying,
was, of the future's
sorrows of brooding on love,
only the beginning
Meaning: All the while I kept saying I longed to meet you, that was, I see now, only the beginning of the sorrows yet to come.
Commentary: Book Fourteen Love Poems IV 850

Headnote: "Composed on the topic 'love that met and then met no more'"
This poem was composed on the topic "love that met and then met no more," a love in which the lovers met once and then could meet no longer. Saying all along that I longed to meet you, he says, was only the beginning of brooding to come. When he longed to meet her, he believed that meeting would clear his heart, yet once they had met, deeper brooding began, and he looks back on this ironic turn of love.
The author, "Major Counselor Narimichi," was Fujiwara no Narimichi. The son of Provisional Major Counselor Fujiwara no Munemichi, he rose to Major Counselor. He was famed as a master of kemari, the courtly kickball, and excelled also in imayō songs and waka.
Poems 890 and 894 in this book were also composed on the same topic, and 881 on a topic of the same sense written with different characters, so that the grief of a love that cannot meet again after one meeting is taken up again and again through the book.

First line, "aimimu to": "aimiru" is for a man and woman to become lovers, and "mu" an auxiliary of will, "that I would meet you."
Second line, "iiwatarishi wa": "wataru" after a verb's continuative form means to keep on doing something. "Shi" is the attributive of the past "ki," "what I kept saying."
Third line, "yukusue no": "of the future," the days after they met.
Fourth line, "mono omou koto no": "of brooding in love."
Fifth line, "hashi ni zo arikeru": "hashi" is an edge, meaning the beginning of something. "Zo" is an emphatic particle that binds with the attributive "keru." "Keri" expresses the exclamation of realization, showing the feeling of grasping only now that it was the beginning.
Author: Fujiwara no Narimichi
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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