Ima mite zo mi oba shirinuru suminoe no matsu yori saki ni ware wa henikeri - Tosa Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

今見てぞ身をば知りぬる住のえの
松よりさきにわれは經にけり

Roma-ji: Ima mite zo mi oba shirinuru suminoe no matsu yori saki ni ware wa henikeri
English Translation: Seeing them now, I
know at last what I've become:
than Suminoe's
ancient pines, sooner by far
I myself have grown older
Meaning: Only now, seeing them, do I know myself: sooner than the ancient pines of Suminoe, I have grown old.
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.
Rowing past Sumiyoshi, a certain person saw its famous pines and composed this poem.
Then the mother of the lost child, unable to forget her child for even a moment of any day, composed "Suminoe ni fune sashiyoseyo wasuregusa shirushi ari ya to tsumite yukubeku."

The first line, "Ima mite zo," means "only now, seeing them," with "zo" an emphatic particle. The second line, "mi oba shirinuru," means "I have come to know my own lot," with "nuru," the attributive form of the perfective auxiliary "nu," answering "zo" in a kakari-musubi construction.
Suminoe in the third line is an old name for Sumiyoshi, famed for its long-lived pines. The fourth and final lines, "matsu yori saki ni ware wa henikeri," close with the exclamatory auxiliary "keri": sooner than those pines, I have grown old.
Before the pines of Sumiyoshi, symbols of long life, the speaker laments having aged over the long sea voyage and realizes it anew. Like "Waga kami no yuki to isobe no shiranami to izure masareri okitsu shimamori" on the twenty-first day of the first month, it is a poem whose theme is the sorrow of growing old.
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Tosa Nikki
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