Picking fresh herbs in the rain.

春雨のふるののわかなおひぬらしぬれぬれつまんかたみたぬきれ

harusame no furuno no wakana oinurashi nurenure tsuman katami tanukire

In a spring shower Falling on Furu Plain,[i] the fresh herbs Have grown, it seems; Soaked, I’ll pick them, Putting my basket down…[ii]

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[i] Furu 布留 was an utamakura in Yamato, often used in poetry because of the place-name’s homophony with furu 古 (‘old’) or, as here furu 降る (‘fall [of rain]’). See McAuley (2020, 653–654) for details and example poems.

[ii] Gotō (1982, 15) notes that there is an alternate interpretation of the final line of the poem: a katami 筐 was a type of woven bamboo basket with particularly small holes between the strips used to make it, and tanukire can be interpreted as an elided version of ta nuki’ire 手貫き入れ (‘put [something] in threading it by hand’). If this is correct, then the final line of the poem would mean ‘Threading them into my basket’.