Mishi hito no matsu no chitose ni mimashikaba tōku kanashiki wakare semashi ya - Tosa Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

見し人の松のちとせにみましかば
とほくかなしきわかれせましや

Roma-ji: Mishi hito no matsu no chitose ni mimashikaba tōku kanashiki wakare semashi ya
English Translation: Had the one I knew
lived on for a thousand years
like the ageless pine,
would I have known such a far,
such a sorrowful parting?
Meaning: Had I been able to watch over her for a thousand years, like the pine, would I ever have known so distant and so sad a parting?
Commentary: 55 The Sixteenth Day of the Second Month: Crossing the Katsura River and Arriving Home

On the sixteenth day of the second month, as they went up toward the capital around evening, they saw that the paintings on the shop chests of Yamazaki and the shape of the main street at Magari were unchanged from before. At Shimasaka someone offered them hospitality. Thinking to enter the capital after nightfall, they took their time, and meanwhile the moon rose. The party crossed the Katsura River under the bright moon. People said to one another, "This river is not the Asuka River, so its deep pools and shallows have not changed at all." Late at night they entered the capital, and when they reached the house and passed through the gate, the moon was so bright that everything could be clearly seen. The house was more broken down and ruined than they had heard, beyond words.
The Katsura River flows west of the capital and is crossed when entering the capital from Yamazaki. The Asuka River was regarded as the very emblem of change because of the Kokin Wakashū poem "Yo no naka wa nani ka tsune naru asukagawa kinō no fuchi zo kyō wa se ni naru." The house had been entrusted to the neighbor, whose home was separated only by a fence so that the two were almost one house; he had asked to look after it, and they had sent him things from time to time while they were away.
Even after composing "Umareshi mo kaeranu mono o waga yado ni komatsu no aru o miru ga kanashisa" upon seeing the young pine in the garden of the ruined house, the grief perhaps found no end, and the speaker went on to compose this poem.
After this poem the diary closes by saying that there are many things unforgettable and regrettable that cannot all be told, and that in any case these pages should be torn up and thrown away at once.

The first line, "Mishi hito no," means "the one I once looked upon," that is, the daughter who died, with "shi" the attributive form of the past auxiliary "ki." The second line, "matsu no chitose ni," means "like the thousand-year life of the pine," and the third, "mimashikaba," "if I could have gone on seeing her, living long," "mashikaba" expressing a counterfactual supposition.
The fourth line, "tōku kanashiki," means "far off and sorrowful." In the final line, "wakare semashi ya," "mashi" is an auxiliary of counterfactual supposition and "ya" a rhetorical particle: would I have known such a parting? Surely not.
Using the counterfactual "mashikaba ... mashi," the poem voices an impossible wish: had the daughter possessed a thousand-year life like the pine, there would have been no sorrowful parting in faraway Tosa. Moving by association from the young pine of the previous poem to the thousand years of the pine, it sharpens the contrast between the pine, emblem of long life, and the daughter's life, cut so short.
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Tosa Nikki
Prev Poem: Umareshi mo kaeranu mono o waga yado ni komatsu no aru o miru ga kanashisa