Natsukusa wa shigerinikeri na tamahoko no michi yuku hito mo musubu bakari ni

English Translation

The grass of summer
has grown so thick, so thickly
that on the jewelled
road, those who pass along it
can knot it as they go by

Meaning

How thick the summer grass has grown: thick enough for those going along the road to knot it as they pass.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 188

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The fifth poem on summer grasses, on grass along a road grown tall enough for passers-by to knot. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Fujiwara no Motozane was a mid-Heian poet, counted among the thirty-six immortals of poetry.
The time is when the summer grasses are thick; the place is a travelled road.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

An exclamatory particle after the perfect auxiliary in the second line lets the surprise come through directly. Shune's sixth poem in Book One ends the same way, and the form belongs to wonder at a change.
The third line is a pillow word attaching to the word for road. Ietaka's hundred and thirteenth poem in Book Two uses it too; there the word for road never appeared and a verb of coming and going stood in its place, while here the road is named outright.
The particle in the fourth line carries the sense of even those merely passing along it.
The word in the closing line marks degree. Knotting grass was a way of praying for safety on a journey, and the same action appears in Princess Shokushi's hundred and eighty-second poem; there it belongs to the memory of a festival, and here it measures the height of the grass.

Author

Fujiwara no Motozane

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other