Aware chō hito mo arubeku Musashino no kusa to dani koso oubekarikere

English Translation

That there might be one
to call me dear — I should have
been born, if nothing
better, at least as the grass
that grows on Musashi plain

Meaning

So that someone might have called me dear, I should have been born — if nothing better — as the grass that grows on the Musashi plain.

Commentary

32 The Grass of Musashino

The Master of the Right Capital Office composed "Aware chō hito mo arubeku Musashino no kusa to dani koso oubekarikere" and presented it to the Teiji retired emperor, and then "Shigure nomi furu yamazato no ko no shita wa oru hito kara ya morisuginuramu" as well. The emperor did not take the matter up. Muneyuki was told that on reading them the emperor had said he could make nothing of them and had shown them to a bishop; and he was heard to say afterwards that his poems had been wasted. That is the whole of the section.
The Master of the Right Capital Office is Minamoto no Muneyuki, a grandson of Emperor Kōkō and one of the thirty-six poetic immortals. In the thirty-first section he sends a poem to the Lady of the Palace Guards, and in the thirtieth he composes on seaweed. The Teiji retired emperor is Emperor Uda, who appears in the first and second sections. A bishop ranked below an archbishop in the priestly hierarchy.
The setting is the residence of the Teiji retired emperor.
What prompted the poem was that his promotion had not come as he wished. It was presented to the emperor.
The emperor did not take it up; he said he could make nothing of it and showed it to a bishop. Muneyuki, the prose concludes, said his poem had been wasted.
It was later included in the Shokugosen-shū.

The opening wishes for someone who would call him dear.
The grass of the Musashi plain comes from an anonymous poem in the Kokin-shū, in which a single stem of gromwell makes all the grass of Musashino look dear. The premise is that even that grass gets looked on kindly, for the sake of what grows among it.
The particle in the fourth line means: if nothing else, at least — so that he is saying he does not rise even to the level of grass. An emphatic particle governs the verb that ends the poem.
That verb expresses regret for how he was born. He takes the vocabulary of a love poem exactly as it stands and makes it a petition for advancement. That the emperor did not understand it is how the section ends.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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