Azusayumi haruyama chikaku ieishite taezu kikitsuru uguisu no koe

English Translation

The catalpa bow
is drawn: near the hills of spring
I have made my home
and without a break I hear
the voice of the warbler there

Meaning

I have made my home close under the spring hills, and the warbler's voice has never once left off.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 29

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, treated as topic unknown.
Two Man'yoshu poems on the warbler are set into the middle of the run on plum. This is the first: a life lived at the foot of the spring hills, with the bird's voice always in the ear. The original gives no fresh headnote.
The poet is Yamabe no Akahito, author of the eleventh poem; this is his second appearance in the book.
The season is spring; the place is a dwelling built close to the spring hills.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The first line is a pillow word attaching to the word for spring, by way of the drawing of a bow made of catalpa wood, since the verb for drawing and the noun for spring sound alike. It carries no sense into the lines below, but the tautness of a drawn bow tightens the poem's opening.
The second line gives the place. Nearness to the spring hills is what makes the constant hearing of the lower lines possible.
The verb in the third line means to settle and live in a place. This is a residence, not a journey.
A perfect auxiliary in the attributive form closes the fourth line and reaches down to the final noun, marking a hearing that has gone on unbroken.
The poem ends on a noun. In the seventeenth and eighteenth poems the warbler's voice was awaited, or heard once; here it is an everyday sound, and the same material is handled quite differently.

Author

Yamabe no Akahito

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other