Kakurenu no soko no shitagusa mi kakurete shirarenu koi wa kurushikarikeri

English Translation

Like the grass that grows
at the bottom of a pond
no one can see, hid
away — a love that no one
knows of is a hard thing, then

Meaning

Like the grass at the bottom of a hidden pond, keeping itself out of sight, a love that no one knows of is a hard thing.

Commentary

138 The Grass Beneath

A man called Koyakushikuso, having visited a woman, afterwards sent her "Kakurenu no soko no shitagusa mi kakurete shirarenu koi wa kurushikarikeri". Her reply was "Mikakure ni kakuru bakari no shitagusa wa nagakaraji to mo omooyuru kana". This Koyakushi, we are told, was a very short man. That is the whole of the section.
Of Koyakushikuso the prose gives nothing beyond the name and the remark that he was very short. Of the woman it says nothing.
The setting is after his visit to her.
The prose records nothing of what prompted it, saying only that he sent it afterwards.
She answered with a poem of her own, and the exchange closes the section. His poem was later included in the Shinsenzai-shū, attributed there to the Minister of the Left of Biwa.

The hidden pond of the first line is one so overgrown that the water cannot be seen, and it introduces the verb for hiding.
The grass at its bottom grows beneath the covering weed, beneath the water, and at the floor besides — hidden three times over.
What follows is keeping oneself out of sight, and everything to this point serves as a preface leading into the love that follows.
The closing marks the recognition that a love no one knows of is hard. As a poem about a secret love it is properly made — but her reply will take the shortness of that undergrowth in quite another sense. The water weed of the hundred and thirteenth section is the same figure, used there by a woman.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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