Natsukusa wa shigerinikeredo hototogisu nado waga yado ni hitokoe mo senu

English Translation

The grass of summer
has grown thick, and even so
the cuckoo has not
come to my house here, and why
has it not given one cry

Meaning

The summer grass has grown thick, and still the cuckoo has not given so much as a single cry at my house. Why is that?

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 189

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The poem stands at the turn from the grasses to the cuckoo. The grass has come and the bird has not, and the complaint leads into the run that follows. The original gives no fresh headnote.
The poem is given as an imperial composition of the Engi era, that is, by Emperor Daigo. In Book Two he is the poet of the hundred and sixty-third poem.
The time is early summer; the place is the poet's own house.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The cuckoo was prized as the bird that announced summer, and its first call was waited for. It is the commonest subject in the summer poems of the Shin Kokin Wakashu.

The first two lines take up the opening of the previous poem almost unchanged, which shows that the two are placed together. But where that poem closed on an exclamation, this one turns concessive and runs on into the lines below: one phrase, put to a different use.
The third line names what is being waited for.
The adverb in the fourth line means why, and the complaint is put as a question about a cause.
The particle in the closing line carries the sense of not even one cry; a negative in the attributive form ends the poem flatly, so that the absence is strongly stated.
The argument is that the thickening grass should have brought the bird as well, and the subject is the failure of the season's signs to arrive together. From this poem onward, the poems wait for the cuckoo and listen for it.

Author

Emperor Daigo

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other