Hototogisu nao utomarenu kokoro kana na ga naku sato no yoso no yūgure

English Translation

Cuckoo, I find still
I cannot think ill of you
here in the evening
outside the village, hearing
you crying somewhere within

Meaning

Cuckoo, I still cannot bring myself to resent you, here at evening outside the village where you are calling.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 216

Headnote: for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
Knowing that the bird sings elsewhere and not here, the poet finds he cannot hold it against it. The headnote assigns the poem to the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The poet, given by his court title, is Saionji no Kintsune, who later rose to Chancellor. In Book One he is the poet of the seventy-second poem and in Book Two of the hundred and fifty-sixth.
The time is a summer evening; the place is outside the village where the bird is calling.
The occasion was submission to the contest.

The first line names the one addressed.
The second line joins a spontaneous auxiliary to a negative: however he tries, dislike will not come. It is a way of saying that the will has no purchase here.
The third line turns the exclamation on the poet's own heart.
The pronoun in the fourth line means you, so that the bird is addressed directly, in the tone of one who knows perfectly well where it is singing.
The poem closes on a noun. The word for elsewhere is the one used in Suo no Naishi's two hundred and fifth poem. The speaker is on the side the voice does not reach, the position of Murasaki Shikibu's two hundred and fourth poem; but where that one is worn out with waiting, this one holds no grudge.

Author

Fujiwara no Kintsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other