Inorikuru kazama to omou o ayanaku ni kamome sae dani nami to miyuramu - Tosa Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

いのりくる風間と思ふをあやなくに
鷗さへだになみと見ゆらむ

Roma-ji: Inorikuru kazama to omou o ayanaku ni kamome sae dani nami to miyuramu
English Translation: Though I thought it calm,
a lull won by our long prayers,
why, without reason,
should even the gulls at rest
seem to me like rolling waves?
Meaning: I thought our prayers had won us a lull in the wind—so why, for no reason at all, should even the gulls look like waves to me?
Commentary: 44 The Fifth Day of the Second Month: The God of Sumiyoshi and the Mirror

On the fifth day of the second month, the party at last set out from Izumi-no-nada toward the anchorage of Otsu. A pine grove stretched as far as the eye could see. Everyone was suffering, and so they composed poems. Before long the master of the boat urged them to row quickly while the weather was good, and the steersman told the boatmen, "Orders from the master's boat: haul on the towropes before the morning north wind rises." His words happened to come out in thirty-one syllables, just like a poem. That day, thanks to everyone's praying all day long that the waves would not rise, neither wind nor waves arose.
On this day the mother of the lost child also composes a poem. The diary calls her "the mother of the one now gone"; she is the mother of the daughter who died in Tosa. Sumiyoshi lies around present-day Sumiyoshi Ward in Osaka, and its god was worshipped as a deity of seafaring.
With neither wind nor waves rising thanks to everyone's prayers, they came upon a place where gulls had gathered and were playing. In his joy that the capital was drawing near, a certain child composed this poem.
As they went on, the pine grove at a place called Ishizu was lovely, with the beach stretching far into the distance. Rowing on past Sumiyoshi, a certain person composed "Ima mite zo mi oba shirinuru suminoe no matsu yori saki ni ware wa henikeri."

The first line, "Inorikuru," means "having prayed and prayed." In the second line, "kazama to omou o," "kazama" is a lull in the wind: though I thought our prayers had brought a lull. "O" is a concessive particle.
The third line, "ayanaku ni," means "for no reason, unaccountably." The fourth line, "kamome sae dani," means "even the gulls," and the final line, "nami to miyuramu," closes with "why should they look like waves?" "Ramu" is an auxiliary conjecturing a cause.
Seeing the flocking white gulls as white waves, the poem playfully captures the mind of a sea traveler who dreads the waves: even though the wind has died down, even the gulls look like waves.
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Tosa Nikki
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