Ware mo shika nakite zo hito ni koirareshi ima koso yoso ni koe o nomi kike

English Translation

I too cried out so —
like the deer — and was desired
for it, once. And now
from the far side of a wall
I hear the voice, nothing more

Meaning

I too cried out so — like the deer — and was desired for it once. Now, from the far side of a wall, I only hear the voice.

Commentary

158 The Belling of the Deer

A man and a woman were living in Yamato. They had lived together for many years when, somehow, he took a new woman; and he brought her into the same house, lodged her on the other side of a wall, and never came to his wife's side. She found it hard, but did not speak her jealousy. On a long autumn night she woke and heard the deer belling. She listened in silence, and from beyond the wall the man said, do you hear, neighbour on the west? What of it, she answered. Did you hear the deer belling, he said; and she said she had. How do you hear it, he asked; and this poem was her answer. At that his feeling returned; he sent the new woman away and lived with his wife as before.
Yamato is the modern Nara prefecture. Neither the man nor either woman is named.
The setting is one house divided, with the man and the new woman on one side of a wall and the wife on the west.
What prompted the poem was his asking how she heard the deer, at the end of an exchange through the wall.
Hearing it, his feeling returned; he sent the other woman away and they lived as before. A single poem reverses the situation, and the section closes there. It was later included in the Shinkokin-shū.

The word in the first line means both thus, in that manner, and a deer, so that I too, so and I too, like the deer are one word.
The verb that follows covers a deer belling and a person weeping, and the passive marks her as the one who was desired, with an emphatic particle governing it.
A deer in autumn was held to bell for its mate, calling the other to it. Once, she says, she was sought in the same way.
The closing says that now she only hears the voice, with an emphatic particle governing the verb and a particle of limitation marking that hearing is all she can do. The move from being called to merely listening is stated through the belling of a deer.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other