Sawa ni ouru wakana naranedo itazura ni toshi o tsumu ni mo sode wa nurekeri

English Translation

Not the tender herbs
that grow in the marshy fields
and yet all in vain
as I pile the years up too
my sleeves have grown wet with tears

Meaning

I am no young herb growing in the marsh; and yet, as I go on piling up the years to no purpose, my sleeves are wet all the same.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 15

Headnote: composed on young herbs, among a hundred poems on personal reflection.
Placed at the end of the run on young herbs, this poem leaves the scene of the observance behind and turns to the poet's own age. The spring occupation of gathering herbs becomes a lament over the accumulation of years. The headnote assigns it to the topic of young herbs within a hundred-poem sequence of personal reflection.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Shunzei, the same as in the fifth poem; this is his second appearance in the book.
The season is that of herb-gathering, though the poem is not set in an actual field: the herbs are raised only as a comparison.
The occasion was the assigned topic of young herbs. Sequences of personal reflection take the poet's own circumstances and old age for their matter, and so state private feeling within the form of topic-based composition.

The first two lines say: I am not a young herb growing in the marsh. A negative in the concessive form with its particle turns the denial around, so that what follows can claim a likeness after all.
The adverb in the third line means to no purpose, in vain, and governs the piling up of years below.
The verb in the fourth line does double duty: to pluck herbs and to pile up years. One word ties the spring occupation to the passage of a life, and the herbs were raised in the upper lines precisely so that this pivot could be made.
At the close, sleeves that in a herb-gathering poem would be wet with dew or snow are wet with tears instead. The scene of a spring observance is carried over whole into a lament for age, and the exclamatory auxiliary marks the recognition.
The run of herb poems that began with the eleventh turns here to human sorrow, and hands the sequence on to the poems of the first day of the Rat that follow.

Author

Fujiwara no Shunzei

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other