Did you come to me
through the sudden rain of this
evening, when I sit
remembering one who is gone—
cuckoo down from the mountain
- Meaning
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Did you come through the sudden rain of this evening, while I sit remembering one who is gone—cuckoo, down from the mountain?
- Commentary
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Part Two: Maboroshi
In the Fifth Month the rains came. Yugiri visited and sat talking with Genji, and they listened to the orange blossom in the garden and to a cuckoo passing. The bird was held to travel between this world and the land of the dead, and it belonged by custom to poems of mourning. Genji spoke first and Yugiri followed. Father and son remembering her together is one of the few passages in this chapter with other people in it.
"One who is gone" is Murasaki no Ue. "This evening, when I sit remembering" is a night given to the dead. "Sudden rain" is a hard shower, a thing of the Fifth Month. "Did you come through" is the question put to the bird. "Cuckoo down from the mountain" is the bird that comes from the hills, and so from the other world. The poem uses the familiar device of hearing news of the dead in a single cry from the garden, and it is well made.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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