Tomokaku mo iwaba nabete ni narinu beshi ne ni nakite koso misu bekarikere - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

ともかくも言はばなべてになりぬべし
音に泣きてこそ見すべかりけれ

Roma-ji: Tomokaku mo iwaba nabete ni narinu beshi ne ni nakite koso misu bekarikere
English Translation: Whatever I might say
in words would surely turn out
to be commonplace;
it is by weeping aloud
that I should have let it show
Meaning: Whatever I might put into words would surely sound commonplace; it is by weeping aloud that I ought to have shown you my heart.
Commentary: Book Fifteen Love Poems V 906

Headnote: "Topic unknown"
Whatever I say in words, she says, will surely become commonplace; it is by weeping aloud that I should have shown my feelings. However many words she spends on her love, they will only sound like the words everyone uses, and she realizes that she should have shown the depth of her feeling not in words but in the sight of her weeping. It is a poem worthy of a poet, one that looks squarely at the limits of language.
The author, "Izumi Shikibu," was the daughter of Ōe no Masamune, Governor of Echizen. She became the wife of Tachibana no Michisada, Governor of Izumi, and bore him Koshikibu no Naishi, and later had love affairs with Prince Tametaka and Prince Atsumichi. She served Jōtōmon'in Shōshi and is known for her passionate love poems. A poem of hers is included in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu.
This is the second of Izumi Shikibu's poems. Taking up "ne o nakeba" in the first line of the preceding poem, this one says "ne ni nakite koso," so that two poems on weeping aloud follow one another.

First line, "tomokaku mo": "in one way or another, however it may be."
Second line, "iwaba nabete ni": "iwaba," the irrealis with "ba," gives a hypothetical condition, "if I were to put it into words." "Nabete" means ordinary, commonplace.
Third line, "narinu beshi": "nu" is the perfective, here intensifying, and "beshi" conjectural, "it would surely become." The poem pauses here.
Fourth line, "ne ni nakite koso": "weeping aloud." The emphatic "koso" closes with the perfective "kere" in the last line. It answers "ne o nakeba" in the first line of the preceding poem, 905.
Fifth line, "misu bekarikere": "misu" means to show, "bekari" is the continuative of "beshi," expressing what ought to be, and "kere" the perfective of the exclamatory "keri," closing the "koso" of the fourth line. "I should have shown it": she realizes that she ought to have shown her love not in words but in her weeping.
Author: Izumi Shikibu
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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