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Kokinshu #17
(Topic unknown.)
No, don't set fire
to Kasuga Plain today --
as fresh as young grass,
my sweetheart is hidden there,
and I too am hidden there.
kasuga-no wa
kyô wa na yaki so
wakakusa no
tsuma mo komoreri
ware mo komoreri
---L.
No, don't set fire
to Kasuga Plain today --
as fresh as young grass,
my sweetheart is hidden there,
and I too am hidden there.
—23 September 2010
Original author unknown, which is not surprising for a poem with the clear cadence of a folk song. A variation (with Kasugano near Nara replaced with Musashino in what's now Tokyo) appears in Tales of Ise with a frame story that makes this rather less innocent sounding. Fields were burned to clear last-year's stubble -- but not, one hopes, while someone is using it for a little privacy (which activity suggests the weather has warmed up). Note while that the young grass is not literal but a pillow-word (stock epithet) for tsuma, at the time generically "spouse" or "sweetheart" of either sex, it nonetheless points forward to sprouting about to happen.kasuga-no wa
kyô wa na yaki so
wakakusa no
tsuma mo komoreri
ware mo komoreri
---L.