Sayo fukete inaōsedori no nakikeru o kimi ga tataku to omoikeru kana

English Translation

Deep in the night the
rice-bearing bird was calling
and I — I took it
for the sound of your hand at
my door, and went to answer

Meaning

Deep in the night the rice-bearing bird was calling, and I took it for the sound of your hand at my door.

Commentary

66 The Rice-Bearing Bird

Toshiko, who later became the wife of Fujiwara no Chikane, composed this poem on a night when she was waiting for him and he did not come. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
Toshiko was Chikane's wife; she is entrusted with the preparations for the retired emperor's celebration in the third section, composes a poem of condolence in the ninth, and dies in the thirteenth. In the forty-first she is one of four gathered at the Major Counsellor Minamoto's house. Fujiwara no Chikane held a post in the Right Horse Bureau.
The setting is her house late at night, waiting for a man who did not come.
What prompted the poem was that wait, and the cry of a bird she heard in the small hours.
The section ends with the poem; no response and no later event is recorded. The sixty-seventh section gives another story of the same two.

The first line means simply that the night had grown late.
The bird named in the second line is one whose identity has never been settled; its name is taken to mean a bird that carries rice, and it was counted among the birds of the secret tradition of poetry. Here it is simply a bird that calls at night.
The particle after its cry is concessive: it was only calling, and yet.
The closing exclaims that she took it for his hand at the door. The whole poem states one thing: that she misheard. Instead of pleading how hard she was waiting, she offers only the mistake.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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