Sasa no ha wa miyama mo soyo ni midaru nari ware wa imo omou wakare kinureba

English Translation

The bamboo grass leaves
rustle all across the hills
in wild disarray,
yet I think only of my love,
for I have come away from her.

Meaning

The leaves of bamboo grass rustle and toss all across the mountain, yet I think only of my wife, for I have parted from her and come away.

Commentary

Book Ten Travel Poems 900

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the fifth of a sequence of travel poems from the age of the Man'yōshū. Though the bamboo grass rustles in disarray across the mountain, the speaker thinks only of the wife he has left, the feeling of one who has just set out. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
No author is named, and the poem continues from the preceding one as a work of Kakinomoto no Hitomaro. Kakinomoto no Hitomaro was a poet of the Asuka period who served as a court poet under Empress Jitō and Emperor Monmu, and was later revered as the saint of poetry.
The scene is the time of setting out after parting from his wife, on a mountain path thick with bamboo grass.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
The poem is included in Book Two of the Man'yōshū as an envoy to the poem Hitomaro composed on parting from his wife and coming up from Iwami Province, with minor differences in wording.
The text carries variant notes giving "no" for "ha" and "me" for "na," but here "ha" and "na" are adopted in accordance with the main text and the reading line.

The first line, "sasa no ha wa," first takes up the bamboo grass growing thick along the mountain path.
The second line, "miyama mo soyo ni," means "rustling all across the mountain." The "mi" of "miyama" is an honorific prefix, and "soyo" is the sound of the leaves brushing together.
The third line, "midaru nari," means "seem to be tossing." "Nari" is an auxiliary of inference from sound; the commotion of the mountain is grasped not by sight but by the rustling of leaves. The poem breaks after this third line.
The fourth line, "ware wa imo omou," means "yet I think only of my love." It is a hypermetric line, and "ware wa" sets the self firmly against the noise outside. As with "imo ni koi" in 897, it sings of thinking of a wife while traveling.
The last line, "wakare kinureba," means "for I have come away from her." The realis form with "ba" gives the reason, and by inversion the cause of his longing comes last. Where the preceding poem uses "kogikureba" for a journey toward the capital, this poem uses the same verb "ku" for a journey away from his wife, reversing the direction of travel.

Author

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other