夏山にこひしき人やいりにけむ
声ふりたててなく郭公
声ふりたててなく郭公
- Roma-ji
-
Natsuyama ni koishiki hito ya irinikemu
koe furitatete naku hototogisu - English Translation
-
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.
- Meaning
- Has the one it longs for gone into the summer mountains? The cuckoo cries out, raising its voice again and again.
- Commentary
-
Book III, Summer Poems
Composed at a poetry contest in the imperial court during the Kanpyō era.
The cuckoo is personified, and its repeated cries are imagined as longing for a beloved who has gone into the mountains.
- Author
- Ki no Akimine
- Source
- Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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.
- 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?
- Is it the same bird that cried so much last summer, the cuckoo I hear? or is it another— its voice unchanged at all.
- In the rainy skies of the Fifth Month, resounding, the cuckoo cries on— what sorrow burdens its heart, that it calls so endlessly?