Turning back again
I cannot help but recall,
cuckoo that you are,
this hedge of the house where once
we spoke a word together
- Meaning
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Turning back to the past, I cannot help remembering—cuckoo, at the hedge of this house where once we exchanged a word or two.
- Commentary
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Part One: Hanachirusato
With private cares compounded by the state of the world, Genji had grown low in spirits. He set out in a break in the summer rains to call on the Reikeiden Consort, one of the late Kiritsubo Emperor's ladies, and her younger sister. Passing Nakagawa on the way, he heard a koto from a modest house, and a cuckoo called from a great katsura tree. Recognizing a house he had once visited, he sent Koremitsu with this poem. What came back was a curt single verse.
"Ochikaeri" is to turn back to an earlier time, the motion of a mind going into the past. The cuckoo, an early-summer bird, appears constantly in older poetry as something that brings the past to mind. Here it is both the bird calling in front of him and Genji himself, come again after long absence. "Spoke only a word or two" concedes that theirs was never a deep connection, which keeps the approach modest.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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