Michi no he no kusabukayuri no nochi mo to iu imo ga inochi o ware shirame ya mo

道の辺の草深百合の後もと言ふ
妹が命を我れ知らめやも

Roma-ji: Michi no he no kusabukayuri no nochi mo to iu imo ga inochi o ware shirame ya mo
English Translation: Like the lily deep
in the grass along the road,
you say "later on";
but your life, my love, how long,
how could I be sure of that
Meaning: Like the lily deep in the grass by the roadside, you say "later"; but how could I know whether you will still be living then?
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2467

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
She says "later" like the lily deep in the grass by the roadside, but life's future is unknown, and the speaker cannot know whether she will still be alive by then: this love poem presses a beloved who keeps putting off their meeting to meet now. Invoking the frailty of life, it voices a man's impatience at waiting for their tryst.
Like the preceding poem, this one speaks through grasses. Where the preceding poem was a woman's lament over a man's empty words, this one has a man reproaching a woman who puts off their meeting by saying "later," so that two poems voicing the lament of the one who waits over a promise, from a woman's side and a man's, stand side by side. The figure of drawing "yuri" in the sense of "later" from the name of the lily also appears in other books of the Man'yoshu.
The author is unknown; according to the left note, the poem comes from the Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Collection. That collection is thought to contain both Hitomaro's own poems and poems by others that he recorded. Kakinomoto no Hitomaro was a court poet active in the reigns of Empress Jito and Emperor Monmu, and is counted among the Thirty-Six Immortal Poets.

First line, "michi no he no": "by the side of the road."
Second line, "kusabukayuri no": "of the lily deep in the grass." Together with the first line these opening lines form a preface, sounding the old word "yuri," meaning "later," through the lily's name of the same sound, and so leading to "nochi" (later) in the third line.
Third line, "nochi mo to iu": "who says 'later.'" A phrase such as "awamu" (let us meet) is left unsaid, quoting the beloved's words putting the meeting off to some later time.
Fourth line, "imo ga inochi o": "your life, my love." It carries the thought that, however she promises to meet later, no one can tell whether she will live until then.
Fifth line, "ware shirame ya mo": "could I know it? No, I could not." The realis "me" of the conjectural auxiliary "mu" with "ya mo" forms a rhetorical question, declaring firmly that no one can know how long a life will last.
Author: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Collection
Source: Manyoshu
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