Natsugoromo haya tachikaete miyakobito ima ya matsuramu yama hototogisu

English Translation

The summer robes are
cut and changed already, and
in the capital
they must be waiting by now
for the cuckoo of the hills.

Meaning

The summer robes are already cut and changed, and by now the people of the capital must be waiting for the cuckoo of the hills.

Commentary

Section 19 The Cuckoo: The Exchange with Tameko

At the beginning of the fourth month a courier is going, and she writes again to the same Gon-Chunagon, saying among other things how she misses last year's spring and summer, and sends two poems. A reply comes again. It says that the grass and the trees are unchanged, just as she saw them last year, and yet nothing feels as it did — the poem running straight on into the prose of the letter — and then, turning to the question about the cuckoo, gives another poem. The lady adds that the Middle Captain Sanekata, having heard no cuckoo by the fifth month, is said to have sent from the province of Mutsu the lines about a cuckoo grown stale in the ears of the capital while the one on this side of the barrier suffers; that she was put in mind of that precedent, and that this letter of Abutsu-ni's was particularly graceful. Meanwhile the end of the fourth month came, and Abutsu-ni gave up hearing even a faint first note. Then she heard at second hand that at a place called Hiki-no-yatsu a great many voices had been heard by someone, and on hearing it she turns a poem over alone; but there is no help in it. Perhaps in the east, all the way to the far end of Mutsu, cuckoos have always been rare. If they did not sing at all it would be easier; that some rare person should have heard them seems to her, with all her heart, a thing to resent.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori, living at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura. The Gon-Chunagon is the daughter of Tamenori, the former Captain of the Right Watch, and serves in the household of Omiya-in; since Tamenori was a son of Tameie and a younger brother of Tameuji, she is a granddaughter of Abutsu-ni's late husband. After the enquiry in winter, the practice poems in spring and the exchange during the fever, the correspondence continues here with the same person. The Middle Captain Sanekata cited in the letter is the mid-Heian poet Fujiwara no Sanekata, who went down to the east as governor of Mutsu.

Around the beginning of the fourth month of Koan 3 (1280), a poem in a letter sent from Kamakura to the capital, just after the change of robes on the first of the month.

It is the second of the two poems sent to the Gon-Chunagon, and it begins the exchange about the cuckoo.

The reply is "Hito yori mo kokoro tsukushite hototogisu tada hitokoe o kyō zo kikitsuru," which answers the conjectured waiting with the fact of having waited and heard.

The poem pictures the calendar of the capital exactly and slips its own wish inside it. The first line names the summer robe, resting on the change of clothing on the first of the fourth month. In the second line the verb means both to cut cloth and for a season to begin, and joined to the verb for changing it names the observance itself; the adverb means already, and credits the capital with promptness. The same pivot was used by Tamekane in winter in "Furusato wa shigure ni tachishi tabigoromo yuki ni ya itodo saemasaruramu," with a travelling robe where this has a summer one. The third line names the people of the capital. The fourth line joins an interrogative particle to a present conjecture. The closing line ends on the noun, setting last the thing being waited for. Not a word says that she herself cannot hear the bird; she says only that they must be waiting, and the implication is left to work.

Author

Abutsu-ni

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other