二声と聞かずは出でじ時鳥
いく夜明かしの泊りなりとも
いく夜明かしの泊りなりとも
- Roma-ji
-
Futakoe to kikazu wa ideji hototogisu ikuyo Akashi no tomari nari tomo
- English Translation
-
Until I have heard
a second cry I'll not leave
cuckoo, though I lie
however many nights here
at the anchorage, waking
- Meaning
- I will not put out until I have heard you call twice, cuckoo, however many nights I must lie awake at the Akashi anchorage.
- Commentary
-
Book Three Summer Poems 206
Headnote: composed on the theme of the cuckoo by the sea.
The topic is the cuckoo heard at the shore, and the scene is a wait for it at a stage on a journey.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Kinmichi, a nobleman and poet of the late Heian period who served as inspector of the provinces.
The time is a summer night; the place is the anchorage at Akashi in Harima Province, a station on the sea route west from the capital.
The occasion was the set topic.
The auxiliary in the second line expresses negative intention: I will not set out. The boat will not sail until a second cry is heard, and asking for two cries repeats the conceit of Tsunenobu's hundred and ninety-seventh poem, moved to a journey.
The third line names the bird.
The word in the fourth line is a pivot, holding both the verb for passing the night and the place name of the anchorage: an anchorage where many nights must be sat out. As in the previous poem's mountain, a state of mind is folded into a place name.
The particle at the close marks a concessive supposition: however long it may be. Delay on the journey is accepted without hesitation, and the attachment to waiting overrides a real cost.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Kinmichi
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- At whichever house it may come and call, I thought and for the cuckoo I waited with all my heart until the waiting wore me
- Night upon night now I have waited past waiting and the mountain's bird far off, beyond the cloud-track has given one cry, no more
- Cuckoo, one cry more and let it call back to mind in Oiso's wood the old days, and the deep nights of years that have grown old now
- That one cry of his I cannot have done with it cuckoo, at the hour of dusk, when the clouds go by and nothing is certain there