Uragaruru asaji ga hara no karukaya no midarete mono o omou koro kana

English Translation

The tips are withered
of the sedge in the low reeds
on the open plain
and my thoughts are as tangled
as they are, in these days now

Meaning

Like the sedge withering at the tips on the plain of low reeds, my thoughts are tangled in these days.

Commentary

Book Four Autumn Poems I 345

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
A run on the grasses begins here. This poem lays the disorder of withering grass over a disordered mind. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Sakanoue no Korenori was an early Heian poet, counted among the thirty-six immortals of poetry. In Book Two he is the poet of the hundred and fifty-second poem.
The time is autumn; the place is a plain of low reeds.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The word opening the first line means the tip or far end, and the phrase describes grass withering from the top down. The same sound occurs in the two hundred and eighty-fifth poem of this book, on leaves turned over, and in the two hundred and ninety-sixth, on a sadness underneath, and it recurs through the book.
The word in the second line names a low-growing reed, written of as a mark of neglected ground.
The third line names a grass, and everything to that point works as a preface leading into the verb below.
The verb in the fourth line means both grass in disorder and a mind in disorder, and it belongs with the grass above.
The poem closes on an exclamatory particle. The state of the grass is carried over into the state of the mind, and by using withering grass as a preface the poem conveys a mood without naming what the brooding is about.

Author

Sakanoue no Koreyuki

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other