Mikakure ni kakuru bakari no shitagusa wa nagakaraji to mo omooyuru kana

English Translation

Grass at the bottom
just long enough to keep it-
self hidden away —
such a thing will not last long
or so it seems to me, at least

Meaning

Grass at the bottom, just long enough to keep itself hidden — such a thing will not last long, or so it seems to me.

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 the moment his poem reached her.
What prompted it is his, "Kakurenu no soko no shitagusa mi kakurete shirarenu koi wa kurushikarikeri", about the hardship of a secret love.
This reply closes the hundred and thirty-eighth section. The prose adds at the end that this Koyakushi was a very short man. Her poem was later included in the Shinsenzai-shū.

She takes over his undergrowth and turns her attention to its length: grass just long enough to hide itself.
What follows says it will not be long, in the grammar of what will not be. The shortness of the grass and the shortness of the affair are laid together.
The closing is an exclamation: so it seems to her.
On the face of it, a love that hides like that will not last. But the prose then tells us the man was very short, and the length of the grass takes on another sense. A single sentence of narrative changes how the poem reads — a piece of humour rare in this book, set between two sections about the Prince of the Ministry of Military Affairs.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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