Kumo mo mina nami to zo miyuru ama mogana izure ka umi to toite shirubeku - Tosa Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

雲もみな浪とぞ見ゆる海士もがな
いづれか海と問ひて知るべく

Roma-ji: Kumo mo mina nami to zo miyuru ama mogana izure ka umi to toite shirubeku
English Translation: Even the clouds all
seem to me as rolling waves—
oh, for a fisher
to ask which of them is sea,
that I might come to know it
Meaning: Even the clouds all look like waves. If only a fisherman were here, so I could ask him which is the sea and know.
Commentary: 22 The Thirteenth Day of the First Month: The Sea after Rain at Murotsu

At dawn on the thirteenth day of the first month a little rain fell, but it soon stopped. Men and women alike went ashore to a suitable spot nearby to bathe. Looking out over the sea, the clouds in the sky and the waves could hardly be told apart.
The party had reached Murotsu the day before, on the twelfth, and was staying there again this day. Murotsu corresponds to present-day Murotsu in Muroto City, Kōchi Prefecture.
Moved by a view of the sea in which even the clouds in the sky all looked like waves, someone composed this poem. The poet is not named.
The diary records no response to it. It goes on to note that the moon was lovely, since it was past the tenth day of the month, and that since the day they boarded, out of fear of the sea god, no one had worn fine robes of deep crimson.

The first line, "Kumo mo mina," means "even the clouds, all of them." In the second line, "nami to zo miyuru," "zo" is an emphatic particle, closing in the attributive form "miyuru" in a kakari-musubi construction. It is a metaphor seeing the clouds as white waves.
In the third line, "ama mogana," "mogana" is a particle of wishing: if only a fisherman were here. The fourth line, "izure ka umi to," means "which is the sea," and the final line, "toite shirubeku," "so that I might ask and know," gives the reason for the wish in the third line.
The poem conveys a vast prospect where sky and sea melt together beyond telling apart, through the idea of wanting to ask a fisherman who knows the sea inside out. On the seventeenth day of the first month, too, a scene in which the sky and the sea floor look alike is sung in "Kage mireba nami no soko naru hisakata no sora kogiwataru ware zo sabishiki."
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Tosa Nikki
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