Miyakoniwa matsuramumonoo hototogisu kyōhinemosuni nakikurasukana

English Translation

In the capital
they must be waiting for you—
cuckoo, and yet here
you spend the whole of this day
crying it away to dusk

Meaning

In the capital they must still be waiting for it—yet here the cuckoo has spent the whole of this day crying the hours away.

Commentary

Section 15: The Father Passed Over at the Appointments; the Beauty of the Eastern Hills

At the appointments in the first month of the new year the author's father should have received a post, but the hope came to nothing. On that fruitless morning a poem arrived from someone who must have felt the same, with a note about the restlessness of lying awake for daybreak, telling himself that surely this time it would come; and the author replied.
Toward the end of the fourth month, for reasons that had to be met, the household moved to a place in the Eastern Hills. Along the road the seedbeds with water let into them and the fields already planted stretched away, greening faintly and pleasant to look at. In the evening, with the shadow of the hills falling dark and close before the house, forlorn and full of feeling, a water rail called and called, and she made a poem.
Ryōzen being close by, she went to worship there; finding it hard going, she stopped at a stone-ringed spring at the mountain temple and drank from her cupped hands. Someone said one could never drink enough of that water, and the author made a poem, to which he replied. On their return, with the evening sun striking clear and the whole of the capital visible in the distance, this man, saying he must go back to the city, felt the parting keenly, and sent another poem the next morning.
When the sound of a monk at his dawn devotions came to her, solemn to hear, she pushed open the door: the ridgeline was paling into light, mist lay over the dark treetops, and the sky closed in by all that foliage, cloudy and lovely, pleased her more than blossom or maples at their height. A cuckoo, too, called over and over from a bough close at hand, and she made a poem of that daybreak and that voice.
Near the end of the month a cuckoo cried noisily from a tree down toward the valley, and she composed again. As she sat gazing, the woman who was with her said: is there anyone in the city hearing this voice now, anyone who spares a thought for us sunk in reverie here? and made a poem, which the author answered.
Near what she took for daybreak, a sound came from the hills as of many people approaching. Startled, she looked out and saw a deer that had come as far as the veranda and was belling there—a voice with no charm in it heard from close by. She made a poem on that, and another on hearing that an acquaintance had come near the house and turned back.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her father is Sugawara no Takasue, who hoped for a post at these appointments and was passed over. Of "the person of the same mind," "the man who drank the water," and "the woman who was with her," the text gives neither name nor station. Ryōzen is one of the peaks of the Eastern Hills, where a mountain temple stood.

The end of that month, Manju 2 (1025), at the house in the Eastern Hills.

A cuckoo crying noisily from a tree down toward the valley is what drew the poem.

It is a solitary poem, and no reply is recorded. Afterwards the woman with her wonders aloud whether anyone in the capital is hearing this voice, and composes "Yamafukaku tarekaomoiwa okosubeki tsukimiruhitowa ōkaramedomo," which the author answers.

Miyako ni wa sets the capital against the mountain village where she is. In the second line ramu is the auxiliary of present conjecture—they will be waiting now—and mono o is a conjunctive particle of concession and feeling that leaves the thought hanging. Hototogisu is set almost as a form of address, and kyō hinemosu ni is all day long. The closing kana is exclamatory. The voice the city waits for is heard here all day and freely, so that the richness of being in the hills and the impossibility of passing that richness on both stand at once. Together with "Tarenimise tarenikikasemu yamazatono konoakatsukimo ochikaerunemo" just before it, the same cuckoo is taken from two directions, and the two poems make a pair.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other