今はとて忘るる草のたねをだに
人の心にまかせずもがな
人の心にまかせずもがな
- Roma-ji
-
Ima wa tote wasururu kusa no tane o dani
hito no kokoro ni makasezu mogana - English Translation
-
Now that it is so,
though one would sow the seeds
of the grass of forgetting,
would that even this
were not left to another’s heart.
- Meaning
- Now that it is so and our bond is ended, one may say to forget and sow the seeds of the grass of forgetting; yet would that even this were not left to your heart’s will.
- Commentary
-
Episode Twenty-One: "If I go forth and leave"
There were a man and a woman who loved one another and had no thought of turning their hearts elsewhere, yet over some trifling matter their married life became burdensome.
Long after the woman had left the house, unable to endure waiting any longer for the man who did not come in search of her, she composed this poem and sent it to him.
Though she herself had departed from him, what did she expect in sending a poem that asks him not to forget?
The "grass of forgetting" is said to be a plant that makes one forget sorrow, yet it is also used to mean a plant that makes one forget a person.
- Source
- Ise Monogatari
- Other
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- Was it in vain that through the passing years in this fleeting world we pledged ourselves so lightly— and thus have I lived?
- She may be gone, but does she think of me— the jeweled vine? Her image alone appears to me ever more clearly.
- If only I might hear that you had planted the grass of forgetting— then I would know that you had truly thought of me.
- In doubting heart that thinks I would forget— that very doubt makes all the more my sorrow deeper than before.