Come then, let us match
our weeping, cuckoo—for I
also do nothing
in this bitter world but lift
my voice and cry aloud too
- Meaning
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Come then, cuckoo, let us match our weeping; for I too do nothing in this bitter world but lift my voice and cry.
- Commentary
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The Initiates' Chapter: The Death of the Empress
After the cloistered emperor had gone, the empress turned to her image and prayed for the enlightenment of the late emperor and of all the souls of her house. Her days went in the nembutsu and in dedications of merit.
While she was weeping over everything that had been and was still to come, a mountain cuckoo called two or three times and passed, and she composed this.
Before long she fell ill. She had long been prepared, and showed no distress; taking in her hand the five-colored cord held by the central image, she called on Amida to receive her without fail. Dainagon-no-suke and Awa-no-naishi clung to her and wept aloud, but there was no sign of suffering in her quiet face. It was the middle of the second month of the second year of Kenkyū. A purple cloud trailed in the western sky, an uncommon fragrance filled the room, and music was heard as she died.
She calls on the cuckoo to see which of them weeps more. Ne wo naku is to cry aloud, and the same word covers a bird's call and a person's weeping.
The bird cries, and she weeps; let us compare. It is put as a game. But that the only one left to compare with is a bird states her isolation exactly.
The first poem of the Initiates' Chapter was also about the cuckoo: just after taking vows, she read the bird's crying as longing for the dead. Then she lent the bird her own feeling. Here she sets herself beside it and measures. She has stopped lending and stands level with it.
That the empress's last poem is an address to a bird matters. There is no person left to address. The Nii-dono and the emperor went into the sea, the house is gone, and the cloistered emperor has driven away. What remains is a bird that will cry each year when the season comes.
After this she takes to her bed and dies with a purple cloud in the west. There the Tale of the Heike ends: a work that opened with the sound of the bell of Gion closes with the voice of a cuckoo.
iza saraba……come then.
namida kuraben……let us compare our tears.
hototogisu……the cuckoo.
ukiyo……this bitter world.
ne wo naku……to cry aloud; punning on a bird's call and human weeping.
nomi zo……nothing but.
ekō……the turning over of merit to the dead.
goshiki no ito……the five-colored cord held at death.
injō……being received by the Buddha.
Kenkyū 2……the year 1191.
shiun……the purple cloud, a sign of rebirth in the Pure Land.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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