Hitokoe ni yagate chidori to kikitsureba yoyo o tsukusamu kazu mo shirarezu

English Translation

Hearing in one cry
a thousand birds at once, I
cannot even guess
the number of the ages
those cries will run out to.

Meaning

Hearing a thousand birds in a single cry, I cannot even guess the number of ages those cries will run out to.

Commentary

39 Screen Poems for the Celebration of the Minister of the Left of Koichijō

The eighth month came. About that time the world was in an uproar over the celebration for the Minister of the Left of Koichijō. The Captain of the Left Gate Guards was to have the screens made, and by way of a connection that had no business asking for poems, the author was pressed to write. What one is given is a written list of the scenes painted on the screens. She sent it back again and again, saying the thing was hollow; but they insisted beyond all reason, and so in the evenings, in the intervals of moon-gazing, she thought out one or two at a time. What follows are the poems made for each of the painted scenes. Thus she was forced into a tiresome business, and into a great number of pieces besides; and of these, she hears, the one on the fishing fires and the one on the flock of plovers were the ones chosen.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Neither the Minister of the Left of Koichijō nor the Captain of the Left Gate Guards who arranged the celebration is named in the text, which gives only office and residence; marginal notes in the base text identify them as Fujiwara no Morotada and Fujiwara no Naritoki. A screen poem is written to accompany a scene painted on a screen, the poet being given a written description of the picture beforehand.
It is the eighth month of the second year of Anna, and the place is the author's dwelling.
It was written for a painting of a traveler who has halted his horse on the shore and is listening to the plovers.
The narrative says that of these poems the one on the fishing fires and the one on the flock of plovers were the ones chosen; this is the poem on the plovers.

The opening means within a single cry, saying that only one call was heard. The second means that it was known at once for a plover; but since the bird's name contains the word for a thousand, the line also says that the one cry became a thousand. That double sense is the hinge of the poem. The fourth line speaks of running out whole ages, carrying the thousand over into length of life. The close says the number cannot be known — a way of wishing years past counting. A bird's name is read as a number and thereby turned to felicitation; the painted scene is the melancholy of a traveler's night, and the poem resolves into a blessing. It shows very clearly how a screen poem must answer at once to the picture and to the occasion.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other