yuki furite ato wa hakanaku taenu tomo koshi no yamamichi yamazu kayowan
In the falling snow Your tracks but briefly Will endure, yet The mountain paths of Koshi Would I endlessly traverse.[i]
586
[i] See: Composed to send off Ōe no Chifuru when he went to Koshi. 君がゆくこしのしら山しらねども雪のまにまにあとはたづねむ kimi ga yuku / koshi no shirayama / shiranedomo / yuki no manimani / ato wa tazunemu ‘My Lord, you go / To the mountains, so white, of Koshi— / I know them not, yet / While the snow endures / Would I seek your trail.’ Lord Fujiwara no Kanesuke (Kokinshū VIII: 391)
Hidden in the grass on the path o’er the plains[i]
Left
なつくればのべのくさばもしげりあひていづれかみちとみえぞわかれぬ
natsu kureba nobe no kusaba mo shigeriaite izure ka michi to mie zo wakarenu
When the summer comes, The blades of grass upon the plains Grow lushly together, so Which is the path to take I cannot tell by looking!
9
Right
をちこちのみちみえぬまでなつののはくさばしげくもなりにけるかな
ochikochi no michi mienu made natsuno no wa kusaba shigeku mo narinikeru kana
Until both distant and nearby Paths I cannot see Across the summer plains Have the blades of grass so lushly Grown, indeed!
10
Do they not know the features of the summer plains conveyed by ‘Hidden in the grass on the path o’er the plains’? While both Left and Right use ‘blades of grass’, this puts one in mind of fresh grass sprouting in spring showers; and then of the two of them, the Right uses ‘distant and nearby’, which is nothing more than an archaic expression from the Age of Gods used for leg-wearying mountain paths, while at least the Left does not have a tangled argument.
ato miezu natsuno no kusaba shigeku tomo yamaji o kakete madoubeshi ya wa
No folk’s tracks visible Upon the summer plains—the blades of grass Lush, yet I wonder if upon mountain paths One would lose ones way?
