Omoiyaru kokoro wa umi o wataredomo fumi shi nakereba shirazu ya aruramu - Tosa Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

おもひやる心は海を渡れども
ふみしなければ知らずやあるらむ

Roma-ji: Omoiyaru kokoro wa umi o wataredomo fumi shi nakereba shirazu ya aruramu
English Translation: Though my longing heart
crosses over the wide sea
to where you now are,
with no letter and no path,
perhaps you will never know
Meaning: My heart, reaching out to you, crosses the sea; but with no letter to send and no path to tread, perhaps you will never know.
Commentary: 18 The Ninth Day of the First Month: Parting from Well-Wishers and the Pines of Uda

Early on the ninth day of the first month, the party rowed out from Ōminato toward the anchorage of Naha. Many came to see them off as far as the provincial border, but above all Fujiwara no Tokizane, Tachibana no Suehira and Hasebe no Yukimasa had been following them from place to place ever since the day they left the residence. The diarist writes that these were people of true devotion, and that their devotion was surely no less deep than this sea. As the boat pulled away, those left on the shore grew distant, until the people on the boat could no longer be seen.
Fujiwara no Tokizane, Tachibana no Suehira and Hasebe no Yukimasa were all people who had been on close terms with the former governor in Tosa. Tokizane had already held a farewell feast for them on the twenty-second day of the twelfth month, even though the journey was by sea.
Those on shore surely had things to say, and those on the boat had thoughts of their own, but there was no longer any way to convey them. Amid this, the poem was spoken as if to oneself and left at that.
The poem was not sent to anyone; it ended as a private murmur. Afterward the boat passed the pine grove of Uda, and before that scene a boatman composed "Miwataseba matsu no uregoto ni sumu tsuru wa chiyo no dochi to zo omou beranaru."

The first line, "Omoiyaru," means to send one's thoughts toward someone far away. The second and third lines, "kokoro wa umi o wataredomo," say that the longing heart crosses the sea to reach them, yet—"domo" being a concessive particle.
In the fourth line, "fumi shi nakereba," "fumi" is a pivot word meaning both "letter" and "treading," overlaying the senses of having no letter to send and no way to walk across the sea. "Shi" is an emphatic particle. In the final line, "shirazu ya aruramu," "ya" is interrogative and "ramu" an auxiliary of present conjecture: perhaps they do not know my feelings.
The poem expresses gratitude and reluctance to part from those who saw them off, through the contrast between a heart that crosses the sea and the lack of any means to send words.
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Tosa Nikki
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