Hito shirezu kurushiki mono wa shinobuyama shita hau kuzu no urami narikeri - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

人知れず苦しきものはしのぶ山
下這ふ葛のうらみなりけり

Roma-ji: Hito shirezu kurushiki mono wa shinobuyama shita hau kuzu no urami narikeri
English Translation: Unknown to others,
what gives me pain is this:
on Shinobu's slope,
the arrowroot that creeps below
turns its leaves in bitterness.
Meaning: What pains me, unknown to anyone, is the resentment of a hidden love, like arrowroot creeping low beneath the trees of Mount Shinobu, its leaves turned over by the wind to show their pale undersides.
Commentary: Book Twelve Love Poems II 1093

Headnote: "On the idea of 'Hidden Love.'"
This is the first poem of a sequence on hidden love linked to poetic places bearing the name "Shinobu." The speaker says that what pains in secret is a resentment that cannot come to light, like arrowroot creeping beneath the trees of Mount Shinobu. According to the headnote, it was composed on the topic "Hidden Love."
The author is Fujiwara no Kiyosuke; "Ason" in the original name is an honorific for officials of the fifth rank and above. The son of Fujiwara no Akisuke, Master of the Western Capital Office, he carried on the poetics of the Rokujō Fujiwara house and wrote the treatise Fukurozōshi.
Mount Shinobu, in Mutsu Province (Fukushima City, Fukushima Prefecture), is a poetic place-name often used in poems of hidden love for its echo of "shinobu," to conceal.

The first line, "hito shirezu," means "unknown to others." It answers "hito shirenu," the first line of poem 1091 in this book, as the pain of a love unknown to others is sung again.
The second line, "kurushiki mono wa," means "what is painful," a construction that holds back until the last line what the pain is. Poem 1096 in this book places the same "kurushiki mono wa" in its second line and sings the pain of hidden love in the same construction.
In the third line, "shinobuyama," "shinobu" holds both "shinobu," to conceal love, and the place-name Mount Shinobu. From here to poem 1096 in this book, poetic places named "Shinobu" follow one another.
The fourth line, "shita hau kuzu no," means "of the arrowroot creeping beneath the trees"; arrowroot crawling low out of sight stands for love that does not come to the surface.
In the last line, "urami narikeri," "urami" holds both "ura-mi," the leaves of arrowroot flipping in the wind to show their undersides, and "urami," resentment toward the beloved. Arrowroot and "ura-mi" are associated words, and "keri" adds an exclamation of realization.
Author: Fujiwara no Kiyosuke
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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