Yama nagara umi wa kogu tomo miyako e wa nani ka uchide no hama o mirubeki - Izumi Shikibu Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

山なからうみはこくとも都へは
なにか打出の濱をみるへき

Roma-ji: Yama nagara umi wa kogu tomo miyako e wa nani ka uchide no hama o mirubeki
English Translation: Though I stay on the mountain
and row out upon the waters,
toward the capital
why should I ever look upon
the beach of setting out?
Meaning: Though I may stay on the mountain and row across the lake, why would I ever look upon Uchide Beach to set out again for the capital?
Commentary: 21 The Pilgrimage to Ishiyama

When the eighth month came, Izumi Shikibu set out for Ishiyama Temple to ease her idleness, meaning to stay about seven days. Thinking that he had not written for a long time, the prince was about to send a letter when the page boy told him, "I went the other day, but they say she is at Ishiyama Temple these days." "Then today is already over," said the prince. "Go tomorrow morning." The boy came to Ishiyama with the prince's letter. Even before the Buddha, Izumi Shikibu's heart was elsewhere; she longed only for the capital and was saddened to think that such a pilgrimage was a sign of how much her life had changed, and she prayed earnestly to the Buddha. Just then she sensed someone below the railing, and looking down in surprise, she saw the page boy. Moved that he had come to so unexpected a place, she had someone ask why, and he held out a letter. She opened it more eagerly than usual.
The woman is Izumi Shikibu, daughter of Ōe no Masamune and, as the wife of Tachibana no Michisada, Governor of Izumi, mother of Koshikibu no Naishi. The Prince of the Dazaifu is Prince Atsumichi, fourth son of Emperor Reizei, so called because he served as Governor-General of the Dazaifu. Ishiyama Temple is a sacred site of Kannon in the province of Ōmi, in present-day Ōtsu, Shiga, reached from the capital by crossing the Ōsaka Barrier.
The prince's letter asked when she intended to leave the mountain. Izumi Shikibu wrote, "I did not come to the mountain with any ordinary resolve," and added this poem.
Reading it, the prince told the boy, "I know it is hard, but go again," and entrusted him with a reply. In it the prince wrote a poem about the Ōsaka mountain he had sought her across and another urging her to come out of the mountain and see him in the capital.

The opening lines mean "though, staying on the mountain, I row upon the lake," the waters being Lake Biwa spread out below Ishiyama, with a concessive conditional.
The remaining lines ask "why should I look upon Uchide Beach toward the capital?" where Uchide Beach, a famous lakeshore spot at Ōtsu, also means "setting out" for the capital, that is, leaving the mountain, with a rhetorical construction. To his "when will you come out?" she firmly declares she has no intention of returning, showing an unusual resolve while also teasing his interest.
Author: Izumi Shikibu
Source: Izumi Shikibu Nikki
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