Kakurenu ni oisomenikeru ayamegusa shiru hito nashi ni fukaki shitane o

English Translation

In the hidden marsh
it began to grow, the sweet
flag — and with no one
to know of it, these roots that
reach down so deep, so deep below.

Meaning

In the hidden marsh it began to grow, the sweet flag; and with no one to know of them, these roots that reach so deep below.

Commentary

69 The Sweet Flag Poems: The Consort's Daughter and the Yamato-Seeming Woman

The fifth month came. The author had sweet flag brought in, threaded it and made a scented ball, and gave it to Michitsuna to be presented to the young lady of that house, with a poem. Her mother sent an answer. Michitsuna prepared a second scented ball and sent it with a poem of his own to the woman he had been writing to, and she replied.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Michitsuna was her son, eighteen that year. Neither the young lady to whom the ball was presented nor her mother, who wrote the answer, is named in the text. The woman is the one the text calls the Yamato-seeming person, and she too is unnamed. The scented ball, hung up on the fifth day of the fifth month to drive off harm, is made of sweet flag and mugwort bound with threads.
It is the fifth month of the third year of Tenroku, and the places are the author's dwelling and the residence of the young lady.
The author had sweet flag brought in, threaded it and made a scented ball, and gave it to Michitsuna to be presented to the young lady; this poem went with it.
Her mother answered with "Ayamegusa ne ni arawaruru kyō koso wa itsuka to machishi kai mo arikere."

The opening names a marsh screened by growth and hidden from view, produced as the place where sweet flag grows. The same word appears in the first book, at "Kakurenu ni ouru kazu o ba tare ka shiru ayame shirazu mo mataru naru kana"; there Kaneie used it in a piece of banter, and here the author uses it in a formal gift poem. The second line means that it began to grow. The third names the sweet flag hung up at the fifth-month festival, the very material of the scented ball. The fourth means with no one to know, saying that it grew where none could see. The word in the close means the roots beneath the plant, hidden deep in the ground, and so serves as the figure for a heart no one knows of. The poem ends on that noun and adds nothing. It is the convention of the fifth-month exchange to boast of the length of the flag's root; here that length is turned toward a depth that goes unknown, so that a greeting sent with a gift carries the author's habitual reflection within it.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other