Shimogare no kusa no yukari zo aware naru koma gaerite mo natsuketeshi gana

English Translation

The kinship of the
grass withered by frost is what
moves me; and when it
greens again — the horse returning —
I would have that horse grow tame.

Meaning

The kinship of grass withered by frost is what moves me; and when it greens again, as they say the horse returns, I would tame that horse.

Commentary

98 The Exchange with the Lord of Horikawa

The tenth month came. Past the twentieth, while she was staying at a house to which she had moved to avoid an unlucky direction, she heard that a child had been born at that other house. One evening a man who seemed to be her brother crept close and drew from his breast a letter folded and knotted in Michinoku paper, thrust into a stalk of withered plume grass. She asked whose it was, and he said only that she should look. Opening it and reading by the lamp, she found the hand very like that of a person she thought of with no pleasure. What was written was: what of that line about what sort of horse? — and a poem. Since those were the very words she had once sent and afterward regretted, it was very strange. Asking whose it was, and whether it came from the Lord of Horikawa, she was told that it was a letter from the Great Minister; that his escort had brought it to the house, had been told he was not there, and had left it all the same. However could he have heard of it, she wondered, turning it over and over. When she consulted the household, an old-fashioned person overheard and said in alarm that it was a great honor, that she must answer at once, and that the escort should be given something. Well then, she thought, he cannot have meant it slightingly; and yet it was carelessly done. So she answered.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The one whom the text calls the Great Minister, or the Lord of Horikawa, was Kaneie's elder brother and stood at that time at the head of government; the text gives no name. The other house is the one Kaneie frequented. The old-fashioned person is the author's father, Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Michinoku paper is a thick paper of good quality.
It is past the twentieth of the tenth month of the second year of Tenen, and the place is the house to which she had moved to avoid an unlucky direction.
The author had once sent Kaneie a poem asking what sort of horse would come to her now. Having heard that line at second hand, he wrote asking what she meant by it, and sent this poem, thrust into a stalk of withered plume grass and carried by his escort.
Wondering how he could have heard of it, but pressed by her father, who was alarmed and said she must answer at once, she thought it carelessly done and replied with "Sasa wakeba are koso masame kusagare no koma natsuku beki mori no shita ka wa."

The opening names grass withered by frost, taking up her own description of herself as grass no horse would touch. The second line says that such kinship is what moves him, the emphatic particle deepening the feeling: the self she had likened to grass is received as something to which he is bound. The verb in the fourth line means that frost-killed grass puts out new shoots in spring, and it also contains the words for a horse returning; on it the poem turns, so that the horse she had produced is drawn into the language of the grass's revival. The close expresses the wish to tame it, reversing her rhetorical question — what horse would come to me? — into: then let this horse be tamed. Working from a single overheard line, he takes every word of it apart and rebuilds it; as an exchange poem it is deftly made, though the author regards the act of sending it on the strength of a rumor as carelessly done.

Source

Kagero Nikki

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