Kashiwagi no mori no shitagusa oinu tomo mi o itazura ni nasazu mo aranamu

English Translation

Though the grass that grows
beneath the oak grove grows old
and grows old with me
I would have you not cast me
aside as a useless thing

Meaning

Even when the grass beneath the oak grove has grown old, and I with it, I would have you not throw me aside as a thing of no use.

Commentary

21 The Grass Beneath the Grove

While the Lesser Captain of the Yoshimine family held the post of second officer in the Palace Guards, he was visiting the Lady of the Palace Guards. From her came "Kashiwagi no mori no shitagusa oinu tomo mi o itazura ni nasazu mo aranamu", and his reply was "Kashiwagi no mori no shitagusa oi no yo ni kakaru omoi wa araji to zo omou". The section closes with the exchange.
The Lesser Captain bore the Yoshimine surname, and this section is set during his term as second officer in the Palace Guards. The Lady of the Palace Guards appears repeatedly in this book: in the eighth section she exchanges poems with the Prince of the Ministry of Central Affairs, and in the tenth she composes a poem passing her former house. The same two appear again in the twenty-second section.
The setting is the period of his visits, while he held the post in the Palace Guards.
The prose records nothing of what prompted the poem. All we are told is that it came from the woman first.
He answered with a poem of his own, and the exchange closes the section. In the twenty-second the same two exchange poems over a strap of dyed leather.
This poem was later included in the Shokukokin-shū.

The oak of the first line was a byname for the Palace Guards, so that the office her lover held is folded into the word.
The grass beneath such a grove grows in shade and goes unnoticed, and she lays her own dependent position over it.
The second line is concessive and hypothetical: even supposing it grows old. The phrase that follows means not to leave a thing lying useless.
The last word is a wish directed at another: that he would be so. By speaking of old age before it comes, she makes the poem not an anxiety about the present but a hope for the long run.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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