時鳥五月水無月分きかねて
やすらふ声ぞ空に聞こゆる
やすらふ声ぞ空に聞こゆる
- Roma-ji
-
Hototogisu satsuki minazuki wakikanete yasurau koe zo sora ni kikoyuru
- English Translation
-
The cuckoo cannot
tell the fifth month from the sixth
and hesitating
between them, its voice is heard
somewhere up there in the sky
- Meaning
- The cuckoo cannot tell the fifth month from the sixth, and its hesitating voice is heard up in the sky.
- Commentary
-
Book Three Summer Poems 248
Headnote: when the men wrote on the theme of the cuckoo in an intercalary fifth month, at the Empress's palace in the reign of Emperor Horikawa.
The subject is an intercalary month. Because the fifth month comes twice, the bird cannot tell where it is in the year. The headnote places the poem at a gathering in Horikawa's reign.
The poet, given by his court title, is Minamoto no Kunizane, a son of Minamoto no Akifusa who rose to Provisional Middle Counsellor. In Book One he is the poet of the tenth poem and in Book Two of the hundred and sixtieth.
The time is an intercalary fifth month; no place is given.
The occasion was the set topic.
Intercalary months were inserted to keep the calendar in order, and when the fifth month was doubled it came round twice.
The first line names the bird.
The second line names the fifth and sixth months of the lunar year. The cuckoo belongs to the fifth, and should fall silent when it ends.
The verb in the third line means to tell apart, with a suffix meaning to be unable to do so fully. Murasaki Shikibu's two hundred and twenty-fourth poem uses the same verb.
The verb in the fourth line means to halt, to hesitate, the word used in Takato's sixty-ninth poem; an emphatic particle follows.
The attributive form at the close answers that particle. A disorder in the calendar shows itself as confusion in a bird, and the wit is fitted to the topic. That a voice is heard while nothing is seen is the situation of the whole run on the cuckoo in this book.
- Author
- Minamoto no Kunizane
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
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Yūgure wa izure no kumo no nagori tote hanatachibana ni kaze no fukuramu
- Next Poem
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Niwa no omo wa tsuki moranu made narinikeri kozue ni natsu no kage shigeritsutsu