Kakurenu ni ouru kazu o ba tare ka shiru ayame shirazu mo mataru naru kana

English Translation

Who could ever count
how many grow in the hidden
marsh? Not knowing one
thing from another, still you
wait — and keenly, so it seems.

Meaning

Who could ever count how many grow in the hidden marsh? Not knowing one thing from another, you wait for it all the same, and keenly too.

Commentary

21 The Kamo Festival and the Fifth-Month Banquet

About that time she went out to see the festival of the fourth month, and that other party had come out too. Judging that it must be so, she drew up to meet them. The waiting being tedious, she took some orange fruit that was at hand, hung hollyhock on it, and sent over an opening verse. After a good while the closing verse came back. Some said that after so many years as a person she had every reason to dislike, she would say only that it was impertinent. When she came home and told Kaneie how it had gone, he said: did you not tell her you felt you could eat her up? — and was much amused. That year the Emperor was to attend the fifth-month banquet, and there was a great commotion about it. When Kaneie said that he would like to see it somehow but had no place to view it from, and that if she wished to see it — she caught him up and proposed a game of backgammon; very well, he said, the stake to be a place at the viewing, and they played. Delighted, she went about her preparations, and in the quiet of the evening she drew the inkstone to her, wrote a poem as though idly practicing, and pushed it over to him. He laughed and gave her a verse in return; and since he meant her to see it after all, he had one of the two rooms adjoining the Prince's viewing stand partitioned off, splendidly furnished, and let her see.
Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke, and would rise to be regent and chancellor. The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The one called that other party is named in the text only by a word for a place; no name is given. The Prince's viewing stand is a stand set up for watching the festival.
It is the evening before the fifth-month banquet in the third year of Kōhō, and the place is the author's dwelling.
Kaneie laughed and answered the poem she had written as idle practice and pushed across, saying how keenly she awaited the banquet.
After this reply, since he meant her to see it after all, he had one of the two rooms adjoining the Prince's viewing stand partitioned off and splendidly furnished, and let her watch.

He takes back her sweet flag, her counting and her waiting. The opening names a hidden marsh, a pool screened by grasses and out of sight, produced as the place where the flag grows. The second line receives her count of the years of its growth and turns it: no one can say how many grow in a marsh no one sees. The third is rhetorical in force — no one knows. The word in the fourth line is the sweet flag and also the pattern or distinction of things, that is, knowing one thing from another, and the poem turns on it; borrowing the plant's name, he lays over it the sense of waiting without understanding why. The close is exclamatory and lets the matter pass: so that is how you are waiting. To a woman who had counted up the years he answers that no one can count them, and turns her keen waiting into waiting in the dark. As the narrative says, he laughed: it is banter met as banter, and that he then in fact arranged the viewing stand is what gives the scene its good humor.

Author

Fujiwara no Kaneie

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other