亡き人を偲ぶる宵の村雨に
濡れてや来つる山ほととぎす
濡れてや来つる山ほととぎす
- Roma-ji
-
Naki hito o shinoburu yoi no murasame ni
nurete ya kitsuru yamahototogisu - English Translation
-
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
- Did you come through the sudden rain of this evening, while I sit remembering one who is gone—cuckoo, down from the mountain?
- Commentary
-
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
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- It is only right that water-weed should gather in the god's still water— but today's own ornament, and you forget its very name
- For the most part this is a world I have thought my way out of, and still— should I go on plucking, and so sinning, at the heartvine
- Cuckoo, carry word to her for me: that here at home the orange trees are at the very height of their flowering even now
- Through this summer day that I spend weeping, with no occupation, comes the voice of an insect, as though it were laying blame on me