Knowing not, perhaps,
that I am like a shore
where no miru grows,
the fisherman, not weary,
drags his feet and comes.

Meaning

Not knowing, perhaps, that I am like a shore where no miru seaweed grows and thus nothing to see, the fisherman comes on, dragging his weary feet without ceasing.

Commentary

Episode Twenty-Five: "In autumn fields"

There was a woman who neither said she would meet nor that she would not meet, but only teased the man with no clear reply, and for that very reason she was all the more alluring.

This poem is her reply to the man’s poem, "In autumn fields, my sleeves, parting the bamboo grass at break of day—yet more than that dew-wetness are the nights I lie without you."

Playing on "miru" as both "to see" and the seaweed miru, she likens herself to a shore where no miru grows, and the man to a fisherman who comes.

This poem is also included in the Kokinshū as a poem by Ono no Komachi. Since the man’s poem and this one appear together there, they may have been arranged as an exchange; perhaps for that reason the two poems do not seem perfectly matched.

Source

Ise Monogatari

Other

Knowing not, perhaps, that I am like a shore where no miru grows, the fisherman, not weary, drags his feet and comes.

Knowing not, perhaps,
that I am like a shore
where no miru grows,
the fisherman, not weary,
drags his feet and comes.