Wata no hara kogiidete mireba hisakata no kumoi ni magau okitsu shiranami - Shika Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

わたの原漕ぎ出でて見れば久方の
雲居にまがふ沖つ白波

Roma-ji: Wata no hara kogiidete mireba hisakata no kumoi ni magau okitsu shiranami
English Translation: Over the wide sea
when I row out and look far,
there, against the sky,
so like the clouds they cannot be told,
the white waves of the offing
Meaning: Rowing out onto the wide sea and gazing far, I see the white waves of the open sea, indistinguishable from the clouds in the distant sky.
Commentary: Book Ten Miscellaneous Poems II 382

Rowing out onto the wide sea and gazing into the distance, the poet sees white waves in the offing that cannot be told apart from the clouds in the sky. The grand scene of sea and sky melting into one is captured by the overlapping of white waves and white clouds.
It was composed when Emperor Sutoku, while on the throne, had poems written on the topic "gazing far over the sea," and it is included in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu. Against the white clouds on the mountain ridge in the preceding poem, 381, here white waves at sea are mistaken for clouds, so that mountain and sea form a pair of white-cloud scenes.

The first line, "wata no hara," names the wide open sea.
The second line, "kogiidete mireba," is a conditional of certainty: when I row out and look. It has eight syllables, an extra-syllable line.
The third line, "hisakata no," is a pillow word for "kumoi" (the sky).
The fourth line, "kumoi ni magau," means indistinguishable from the clouds of the distant sky, echoing the white clouds of the preceding poem.
The final line, "okitsu shiranami," ends with a noun, presenting the white waves of the offing; "tsu" is an old particle meaning "no."
Author: Fujiwara no Tadamichi
Source: Shika Wakashu
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