Just as it grows dark,
already it turns to dawn—
this summer night so brief;
is it for this it cries on,
the cuckoo in the hills?
- Meaning
- Just as it seems to grow dark, it is already dawn—does the cuckoo in the hills cry because it cannot have its fill of such a brief summer night?
- Commentary
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Book III, Summer Poems
Composed at a poetry contest in the imperial court during the Kanpyō era.
The shortness of the summer night is lamented through the cuckoo’s cry; not only the bird, but also the poet visiting his beloved would feel this brevity.
- Author
- Mibu no Tadamine
- Source
- Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- Though the orange blooms, where once it made its lodging, have not yet withered, why then has the cuckoo’s cry fallen silent all at once?
- On a summer night, just as I seem to fall asleep, the cuckoo’s one cry— and already the dawn breaks, light spreading in the east.
- In summer mountains, has the one it longs for gone deep into their depths? raising up its voice in cries, the cuckoo calls and calls.
- Is it the same bird that cried so much last summer, the cuckoo I hear? or is it another— its voice unchanged at all.