Utsu ta ni wa hie wa shi amata ari to iedo eraeshi ware zo yo o hitori nuru

打つ田には稗はしあまたありといへど
選えし我れぞ夜をひとり寝る

Roma-ji: Utsu ta ni wa hie wa shi amata ari to iedo eraeshi ware zo yo o hitori nuru
English Translation: In the tilled rice field
there are barnyard weeds aplenty
left there, so they say,
yet it is I who was picked out,
I who sleep alone at night
Meaning: In the tilled rice field, they say, the barnyard millet grows in plenty, yet it is I who was singled out and cast away, and I sleep alone through the night.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2476

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
Though barnyard millet grows in abundance in the tilled field, left unpulled, the speaker alone has been picked out and cast aside to sleep alone at night. Likening the self to a weed in the paddy, the poem voices with self-mockery the loneliness of one abandoned by a lover.
This is one of the poems "Expressing Feelings through Things," a love poem set upon barnyard millet. Following the forgetting grass and the shida grass on the eaves of the preceding poem, it takes up the millet in the paddy, a plant close to daily life, drawing on the sensibility of people who knew farm work.
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, "utsu ta ni wa": "in the field that is hoed and tilled." The particle "wa" singles out the field.
Second line, "hie wa shi amata": "barnyard millet in plenty." In rice paddies this millet was pulled out as a weed. "Shi" is an emphatic particle.
Third line, "ari to iedo": "though they say there is." "Do" is a concessive particle, contrasting the abundant millet left unpulled with the speaker's own fate. It is a hypermetric line.
Fourth line, "eraeshi ware zo": "I who was picked out." "E" is the continuative form of the passive auxiliary "yu," "shi" the attributive form of the past auxiliary "ki," and the emphatic particle "zo" calls for the closing form in the fifth line.
Fifth line, "yo o hitori nuru": "I sleep alone at night." Answering "zo" in the fourth line with the attributive form "nuru," this kakari-musubi construction heightens the loneliness of sleeping alone.
Author: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Collection
Source: Manyoshu
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