うちとけて今日だに聞かむ時鳥
しのびもあへぬときは來にけり
しのびもあへぬときは來にけり
- Roma-ji
-
Uchitokete kyō dani kikamu hototogisu shinobi mo aenu toki wa kinikeri
- English Translation
-
Let your heart be open,
and let me hear it today
at least — the cuckoo.
The season has come round when
it can be hidden no longer.
- Meaning
- Let your heart be open, and let me hear it today at least — the cuckoo. The season has come when it can be hidden no longer.
- Commentary
-
78 The Fifth Month: Exchanges on the Cuckoo and the Sweet Flag
The fifth month came. Michitsuna sent the woman a poem on the cuckoo, and she answered it. Then on the fifth day of the fifth month, the festival of the sweet flag, he sent another on that plant, and again she answered.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Michitsuna was her son, nineteen that year. The woman is the one the text calls the Yamato-seeming person, and she is unnamed. The fifth day of the fifth month is the festival at which sweet flag is hung under the eaves and scented balls are put up.
It is the fifth month of the first year of Tenen, and the place is the woman's house at the foot of Mount Miwa.
The fifth month having come, Michitsuna sent the woman this poem on the cuckoo.
She answered with "Hototogisu kakure naki ne o kikasete wa kakehanarenuru mi to ya naruramu."
The opening means with the heart unguarded, setting first the attitude he hopes for in her. The second means: today at least let me hear it, its particle marking the smallest of requests. The third names the cuckoo, whose call at the beginning of summer was one of the season's pleasures. The verb in the fourth means both to keep out of sight and to hold something back, and on it the poem turns: the seasonal fact that the bird has passed the time when it sings only in a muffled voice, and the personal fact that he can hold back no longer, are held in a single word. The close states as a discovery that the season has come. Making the change of season his pretext for bringing a hidden feeling into the open, he turns the customary waiting for the first cuckoo into a suit of love. That his mother, the year before, had used the same bird in "Ware zo geni tokete nurame ya hototogisu mono omoi masaru koe to naruramu," with the movement exactly reversed, is worth noticing.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Michitsuna
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- Though you may call it a season of lying hidden in the water, still I would cut below the flag and see whether hearts agree.
- Not even knowing when it is to be cut below, the wild rice will not come up into the world at all, though someone should cut for it.
- If the cuckoo lets its voice be heard where nothing hides it, must I then become one who is carried far off, and set apart from you?
- That the years have gone by while I brooded — I learn it now, having let this day, the day of the sweet flag, come round and pass, and pass again.