No cuckoo’s voice
is heard here at all, and yet
the mountain echo—
why does it not bring to me
the cry from somewhere afar?
- Meaning
- No cuckoo’s voice is heard here at all; why does the mountain echo not carry to me the cry from elsewhere?
- Commentary
-
Book III, Summer Poems
Composed when courtiers, gathered in the palace antechamber, were asked to compose a poem on waiting for the cuckoo.
Here, rather than waiting for the season when the cuckoo begins to sing, the poet longs to hear its voice already sounding somewhere else, wondering why even the echo does not convey it.
- Author
- Oshikochi no Mitsune
- Source
- Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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?
- The cuckoo cries upon the mountain of wait— for one it awaits; and I, all at once, as well, feel my longing deepen still.
- Is it of old times that it still feels such longing, the cuckoo that cries— it comes to my former home and sings there, as once it did?