Samidare no tsuki wa tsurenaki miyama yori hitori mo izuru hototogisu kana

English Translation

In these rains the moon
is indifferent, and out
of the deep mountains
there comes out, all on its own
one cuckoo, and nothing more

Meaning

In the long rains the moon takes no notice and will not show; and out of those deep hills comes the cuckoo, alone.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 235

Headnote: from the time when he presented a fifty-poem sequence.
Three poems pairing the long rains with the cuckoo follow. In this first, only the bird comes out of the hills the moon will not leave. The headnote assigns it to a fifty-poem sequence.
This is Teika's second appearance in this book, after the two hundred and thirty-second poem.
The time is a night in the season of long rains; the place is the deep hills.
The occasion was the presentation of the fifty poems.

The adjective in the second line means unconcerned, taking no notice, the word used of the dawn moon in Yoshitsune's two hundred and ninth poem. A moon hidden by the long rain is treated as heartless.
The third line means from the deep hills, with an honorific prefix. Moon and bird are set as two things that should come out from there.
The fourth line means singly, on its own: the moon does not come, and the bird does, and the particle carries the sense of even so.
The poem closes on a noun with an exclamatory particle. Chikamune's two hundred and twelfth poem had the unwaited-for moon rise while the awaited bird stayed away; this one reverses that. The same pair is used, with the one that comes and the one that does not exchanged.

Author

Fujiwara no Teika

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other