Ima sara ni ikanaru koma ka natsuku beki susamenu kusa to nogare senu mi o

English Translation

What horse, at this late
day, would ever come to me?
I am the grass that
no horse will touch, and a self
that cannot get away from it.

Meaning

What horse, at this late day, would ever come to me? I am the grass no horse will touch, and a self that cannot get away from it.

Commentary

91 The Reply on the Grass No Horse Will Touch

The Master of the Right Stables kept asking her to press Kaneie on his behalf. When she consulted Kaneie as to what she should do, he answered that people were saying she had been making much of the man and fussing over him. To that the author composed this poem.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and would rise to be regent and chancellor. The Master of the Right Stables was Kaneie's younger brother; the text gives only his office and no name. He headed the office in charge of the horses of the right.
It is the second year of Tenen, and the place is the author's dwelling.
Since the Master of the Right Stables kept asking her to press his suit, she consulted Kaneie; he answered that people were saying she had been making much of the man. This poem answers that.
After it, in the fifth month, comes the scene in which she offers robes to a goddess on setting out for a shrine.

The opening means: now, at this late day, and starts the poem in a key of resignation. The word in the second line means a horse, and plays on the fact that the suitor is Master of the Right Stables, the officer in charge of horses; on it the poem turns, so that in likening him to a horse she says at once that no such horse could come to her. The third asks whether one would grow tame, and with the interrogative above it the phrase is rhetorical. The fourth names grass that horses will not touch, that is, something nothing goes near; and so she describes a woman long unregarded by Kaneie. The close ends on a noun with its particle: a self that cannot escape it. Told that people were saying she had been making much of the man, she answers that being grass no horse will graze, she can hardly have horses coming to her. She works his office into her material, and the shape of the poem lies in denying a rumor by way of disparaging herself.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other