Wasuregusa ouru nobe to wa miruramedo ko wa shinobu nari nochi mo tanoman

English Translation

You may look at it
and see a field where the grass
of forgetting grows —
but this is the grass of long-
ing: I shall trust you hereafter

Meaning

You may see in it a field where the grass of forgetting grows. But this is the grass of longing; and I shall go on trusting you.

Commentary

162 The Grass of Forgetting

On another occasion, while Captain Ariwara was in attendance at the palace, the Lady of the Bedchamber sent out to him some grass of forgetting, asking what it was called; and the Captain composed this poem. The same plant is called both grass of longing and grass of forgetting, the prose explains, and he composed on that.
Captain Ariwara is Ariwara no Narihira, who exchanges poems with the Lady of Nijō in the hundred and sixty-first section. Of the Lady of the Bedchamber the prose says nothing further. The grass of forgetting is the day lily, believed to make its wearer forget; the grass of longing was taken to be the same plant under another name.
The setting is the palace, where the plant was sent out to him.
What prompted the poem was the question of what the plant was called. Naming it is itself the poem.
The section closes with the poem and the note about the plant's two names.

The opening grants that she may see in it a field of the grass that makes one forget.
The concessive turns on it: and yet.
What follows names it the grass of longing instead. Given a plant with two names, he takes the one that means enduring and yearning rather than forgetting.
The closing says he will go on trusting her. Handed the grass of forgetting — a gift that might mean forget me — he reads it as the grass of longing and answers that he will keep his hopes. One name for a plant reverses the sense of the whole.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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