Nagekitsutsu akashi kuraseba hototogisu kono u no hana no kage ni nakitsutsu

English Translation

Sighing, I pass the
nights and days; and the cuckoo
goes on crying, crying
there in the shadow of these
white deutzia flowers.

Meaning

Sighing, I pass the nights and days; and the cuckoo goes on crying in the shadow of these white deutzia flowers.

Commentary

95 The Exchange on the Deutzia Flowers

A letter came from the Master of the Right Stables about the letter she had shown him; she answered it, and he sent a poem in reply. Wondering why he should take it all so hard, the author answered him.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The Master of the Right Stables was Kaneie's younger brother; the text gives only his office and no name. The deutzia flowers white in the fourth and fifth months, and in poetry the cuckoo is said to sing in their shade.
It is the fifth month of the second year of Tenen, and the place is the Master of the Right Stables' residence.
A letter came from him about the piece of Kaneie's letter she had torn off and shown him; she answered it, and he sent this poem in reply.
Wondering why he should take it all so hard, the author answered with "Kage ni shimo nadoka nakuramu u no hana no eda ni shinobu no kokoro to zo kiku."

The opening means sighing on and on, a phrase that recurs throughout this diary. The second means passing the nights and the days, that is, grieving without distinction of night or day. The third names the cuckoo, the bird he has used again and again in these exchanges, and here it stands for himself. The fourth names the deutzia, which flowers white in the fourth and fifth months and in whose shade the cuckoo was said to sing; the first syllable of its name sounds the word for what is wretched, and some read the sense of a wretched self into it. In the close the word for shade means the shadow of the flowers and also a place out of sight, and the verb means both a bird's crying and a person's weeping, so that a cuckoo crying on in the shade of the flowers becomes a man weeping out of sight. Using the settled seasonal pairing of cuckoo and deutzia, he states the depth of his feeling; one can see that as the suit drags on without progress the pitch of his poems has shifted toward lament.

Source

Kagero Nikki

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