Mishimae no irie no makomo ame fureba itodo shiorete karu hito mo nashi

English Translation

At Mishima Bay
the wild rice in the inlet
when the rain comes down
droops the lower for it, and
there is nobody to cut it

Meaning

The wild rice in the inlet at Mishima droops the more for the rain, and no one comes to cut it.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 228

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
A run on wild rice begins here. It is a waterside plant, cut and used for matting. The original gives no fresh headnote.
The poet, given by his court title, is Minamoto no Tsunenobu; this is his fourth appearance in this book, after the hundred and ninety-seventh, two hundred and twenty-second and two hundred and twenty-fifth poems.
The time is the season of long rains; the place is Mishima Bay in Settsu Province, along the Yodo River in what is now Takatsuki in Osaka, the same ground as Minamoto no Michiteru's twenty-fifth poem in Book One on the budding of reeds.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The first two lines fix place and object.
The third line gives a settled condition: because the rain falls.
The adverb in the fourth line means all the more, and the verb means to lose strength, to droop, the word used of geese in Teika's sixty-third poem in Book One.
The poem ends flatly on a negative, with a particle carrying the sense of not even anyone to cut it. Because of the rain nobody comes out, and so the plants stay as they are. The absence of human hands makes matters worse, the same shape as in the two hundred and twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth poems, where rope and conduit failed: the long rain stopping the work of people is the subject.

Author

Minamoto no Tsunenobu

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other