KKS 25

Text

「歌たてまつれ」とおほせられし時、詠みてたてまつる

When [the Emperor] said "Submit a poem," [Tsurayuki] read this and submitted it.

貫之

我せこが衣春雨降るごとに野辺の緑ぞ色まさりける

waga seko ga
koromo harusame
furu goto ni
nobe no midori zo
iro masari-keru

My husband's clothes
Stretched for washing: the spring rain
Every time it falls
The green color of the fields
Grows a shade deeper.

(See poem 22 for notes on the prose preface, which is the same)

My husband: Because the poet is a man, a number of early commentators tried to interpret seko as "wife". This idea proved untenable, but there were other attempts to deal with the difficulty: Takanao (Shinshaku) thought it was a miscopying of wagimoko (my wife), while Tō no Tsuneyori

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