Chigiri okishi uzuki wa ikani hototogisu waga mi no uki ni kakehanaretsutsu

English Translation

What is to become
of the fourth month we agreed on?
Cuckoo — because of
my own wretchedness, you keep
far off, and further off still.

Meaning

What is to become of the fourth month we agreed on? Cuckoo, because of my own wretchedness you keep far off, and further off still.

Commentary

88 The Exchange over the Promise of the Fourth Month

The fourth month came. The Master of the Right Stables called again and again to press his suit, and asking for inkstone and paper he wrote a poem urging that something be settled within the month. The author answered it.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The Master of the Right Stables was a younger brother of Kaneie; the text gives only his office, and a marginal note in the base text identifies him as Fujiwara no Tōdo. The cuckoo sings at the beginning of summer and is awaited in the fourth month. The flowering orange is the flower that calls up the past, and belongs with the cuckoo.
It is the fourth month of the second year of Tenen, and the place is the author's dwelling.
The Master of the Right Stables called again and again to press his suit, and asking for inkstone and paper he wrote this poem urging that something be settled within the month.
The author answered with "Nao shinobe hanatachibana no eda ya naki aoi suginuru uzuki naredomo."

The opening means: that we had agreed upon, referring to the understanding that the matter would be settled within the month. The second asks what is to become of that month, pressing the nearness of the term. The third names the cuckoo, the bird of the fourth month and the standard figure for what is awaited; here it stands for her answer, and for the match itself. The fourth means: through my own wretchedness, laying the delay to his own ill fortune. The close means keeping ever further off, so that the bird's failure to come near and the receding of the match are held together. To put a piece of business into a poem, he raises the season's bird and borrows the figure of one who waits. As the narrative says, he asked for inkstone and paper and wrote on the spot, and the urgency shows in the language; it is much the same posture as Kaneie's poem in the first book pressing for a robe to be made, which put the business itself into the closing line.

Source

Kagero Nikki

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