Kasugano no kusa wa midori ni narinikeri wakana tsumamu to tare ka shimekemu

English Translation

On Kasuga Moor
the grass has now turned to green
and who was it then
that marked the field off, saying
I shall gather the young herbs

Meaning

The grass on Kasuga Moor has turned green at last. Who was it, then, that marked this field off, meaning to gather young herbs here?

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 12

Headnote: a screen poem from the Tenryaku era.
Taking up the marked field of the previous poem, this one keeps the same act of claiming ground but moves the season forward, to a moor whose grass has grown green. Its point is the recognition that the herbs worth picking are already past. The headnote places it as a screen poem of Emperor Murakami's reign, written to accompany a painted panel.
Mibu no Tadami, whose dates are unrecorded, was a son of Mibu no Tadamine and a poet of the mid-Heian period, counted among the thirty-six immortals of poetry. The story of his defeat by Taira no Kanemori at the palace poetry contest of 960 has been told and retold.
The season is just after the time for gathering young herbs; the place is Kasuga Moor.
The occasion was composition for a screen. Such poems were written to match the scenes painted on furnishings, and served to draw out in words what the picture showed.

The first two lines give the present view: the grass of Kasuga Moor has turned wholly green. Colour alone tells us the season for young herbs has passed.
The auxiliary closing the third line carries wonder with it, the sense of a change noticed only now.
In the fourth and fifth lines an interrogative particle governs an auxiliary of past conjecture: who can have marked it off? The form is a question, but it reads as an observation, that someone staked a claim here and then failed to come.
Where the previous poem laments the snow from the position of the person who set the marker, this one looks with the eyes of a passer-by who finds only the marker and guesses at the story behind it. Built around the same verb, the two are arranged so that the point of view is reversed.

Author

Mibu no Tadami

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other