Miyako nite yama no ha ni mishi tsuki naredo nami yori idete nami ni koso ire - Tosa Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

都にてやまのはにみし月なれど
なみより出でゝなみにこそ入れ

Roma-ji: Miyako nite yama no ha ni mishi tsuki naredo nami yori idete nami ni koso ire
English Translation: In the capital
I watched it at the hills' rim,
this same moon, and yet
here it rises from the waves
and sinks back into the waves
Meaning: In the capital I watched this moon rise and set at the mountains' rim; here it rises from the waves and sinks into the waves.
Commentary: 29 The Twentieth Day of the First Month: Abe no Nakamaro's Moon Poem

On the twentieth day of the first month the weather was the same as the day before; the boat could not sail, and everyone lamented. In their distress and impatience they did nothing but count the days that had passed—today makes so many, twenty, thirty—on their fingers, until it seemed their fingers might be worn out. Unable to sleep at night, they saw the moon of the twentieth rise. There was no mountain rim; the moon came up out of the sea.
Abe no Nakamaro lived in the Nara period. He went to Tang China as a student with an embassy and served at the Tang court. Later he tried to return home, but the ship he boarded was wrecked and he could not, and he ended his life in China. The diary tells how, at the place where Nakamaro was to board ship for home, the people of Tang held a farewell feast and composed Chinese poems in sorrow at parting.
Moved by the story of Nakamaro's "Aounabara furisake mireba kasuga naru mikasa no yama ni ideshi tsuki kamo," a certain person, thinking back on that long-ago time, watched the moon rise from the sea and sink into it, and composed this poem.
The diary records no response. The next day, the twenty-first, the party set sail around the hour of the hare, and everyone else's boats rowed out at the same time.

The first line, "Miyako nite," means "in the capital." The second line, "yama no ha ni mishi," means "that I saw coming and going at the mountains' rim," with "shi" the attributive form of the past auxiliary "ki." The third line, "tsuki naredo," continues concessively: "though it is the same moon."
The fourth and final lines, "nami yori idete nami ni koso ire," mean that here it rises from the waves and sinks into the waves. "Koso" is an emphatic particle, closing with "ire," the realis form of the verb "iru," in a kakari-musubi construction.
Contrasting the moon seen at the mountains' rim in the capital with the moon seen at sea, the poem conveys the felt reality of having traveled far, in how the same moon comes and goes differently depending on where one sees it. Repeating "nami" (waves) twice emphasizes a scene of nothing but sea as far as the eye can reach. It is a poem that resonates with Nakamaro's, which thought of the moon of home from a foreign land.
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Tosa Nikki
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