Kitokite wa kawa no horie no mizu o asami fune mo waga mi mo nazumu kyō kana - Tosa Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

きときては川のほりえの水をあさみ
船も我が身もなづむけふかな

Roma-ji: Kitokite wa kawa no horie no mizu o asami fune mo waga mi mo nazumu kyō kana
English Translation: Come at last, and yet
the canal's water is low,
so shallow that now
both the boat and I myself
struggle on and on today
Meaning: We have come this far, yet the water in the river channel is so shallow that today both the boat and I can barely make our way.
Commentary: 46 The Seventh Day of the Second Month: Struggling Upriver and the Ship's Master's Poems

On the seventh day of the second month, the party brought the boat into the river mouth and rowed upstream, but the water was low and they had a hard time of it. Getting the boat upriver was very difficult.
"The master of the boat" refers to its owner, the former Governor of Tosa whose term had ended, Ki no Tsurayuki. The diary describes this master as sickly, a rough-hewn man to begin with, who knew nothing at all of poetry.
Impressed by the old woman of Awaji's poem "Itsushika to ibusekaritsuru naniwagata ashi kogisokete mifune kinikeri," and perhaps puffed up at being near the capital, the master of the boat at last squeezed out an odd poem. This is that poem.
The diarist writes that he must have composed it this way because he was ill. Not content with one poem, the master went on to compose "Toku to omou fune nayamasu wa waga tame ni mizu no kokoro no asaki narikeri."

The first line, "Kitokite wa," means "though we have come." The second line, "kawa no horie no," means "of the river channel," a "horie" being a waterway dug out of the ground. The third line, "mizu o asami," uses the pattern "... o ... mi" to express cause: because the water is shallow.
The fourth line, "fune mo waga mi mo," means "both the boat and myself," and the final line, "nazumu kyō kana," closes with the exclamatory particle "kana": today we struggle on. "Nazumu" means to have difficulty making headway.
The poem overlays the boat's struggle to climb the shallow river with the speaker's own body troubled by illness. The diary judges that he composed it so because he was sick.
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Tosa Nikki
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