ほととぎす言問ふ声はそれなれど
あなおぼつかな五月雨の空
あなおぼつかな五月雨の空
- Roma-ji
-
Hototogisu kototou koe wa sore naredo
ana obotsukana samidare no sora - English Translation
-
The cuckoo's voice that
comes calling and asking is
the same voice, and yet
how hard it is to be sure
under a sky of long rains
- Meaning
- The cuckoo's calling voice is surely the same one, and yet how uncertain everything is under this sky of long rains.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Hanachirusato
This came back from the house at Nakagawa. The voice may well be his, she says, but perhaps he has the wrong door—a gentle way of putting him off, and she would go no further. Koremitsu understood and withdrew without pressing. Whether there was a new man visiting, or whether the household was wary of the Minister of the Right's power, Genji was made to feel how the sympathies of the world had shifted.
"Koto tou" is to call on or address someone, taking up his "cuckoo." "Ana obotsukana" is a sigh at not being able to tell. "The sky of the fifth-month rains" is both the season's overcast and a figure for a situation that cannot be judged. She never states the refusal, letting the weather leave everything unresolved—a way of turning him away that gives no offense.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Out of season, this bloom that opened this morning seems to have been made to droop by the summer rain before it could show its glow
- Turning back again I cannot help but recall, cuckoo that you are, this hedge of the house where once we spoke a word together
- Finding the fragrance of the orange dear to it, the cuckoo has come, seeking out and calling on this village of fallen bloom
- At a house gone wild where no one comes to see it, it is the orange bloom alone that has become the eaves' one reason to call