Akatsuki no nezame no mimi ni kikishikado tori yori hoka no koe wa sezariki

English Translation

I heard with the ears
of one woken at daybreak
and what I heard was
nothing — no voice at all there
but the voice of the bird itself

Meaning

I heard with the ears of one woken at daybreak; and there was no voice at all, none but the bird's.

Commentary

119 No Voice but the Bird's

To the same woman as in the previous section, Fujiwara no Saneki, once Governor of Michinoku and now dead, sent a poem. This was when his illness had grown grave and had then eased a little. He sent "Karakushite oshimitometaru inochi mote au koto o sae yamamu to ya suru", and her reply was "Morotomo ni iza to wa iwade Shide no yama nadoka wa hitori koemu to wa seshi". But on the night he went to her he could not see her, some obstacle perhaps having arisen; and the next morning, having gone home, he sent "Akatsuki wa naku yūtsuke no wabigoe ni otoranu ne o zo nakite kaerishi", and her reply was "Akatsuki no nezame no mimi ni kikishikado tori yori hoka no koe wa sezariki". That is the whole of the section.
Fujiwara no Saneki served as Governor of Michinoku. The woman is the Elder Lady of Kan'in of the hundred and eighteenth section. That these poems appear in the personal collection of Minamoto no Saneakira is thought to be a confusion arising from the similarity of the two men's names.
The setting is the same morning, after his poem reached her.
What prompted it is his, "Akatsuki wa naku yūtsuke no wabigoe ni otoranu ne o zo nakite kaerishi", with its claim to have outdone the cock.
This reply closes the hundred and nineteenth section. The prose passes no judgement; the section consists of four poems.

The opening restates his hour from her own side: she was awake at daybreak and listening. She was not asleep and missing it.
The concessive turns on that: she heard, and yet.
The closing says there was no voice but the bird's, in the grammar of something firmly past.
He claimed to have wept as loudly as the cock; she reports that only the cock was audible. She denies his account by her own observation of the same hour, and offers facts in place of grievance. Four poems of exchange end on that flat remark.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other