classic waka stream

心のみ空になりつつほととぎす
人頼めなるねこそ泣かるれ
Roma-ji

Kokoro nomi sora ni naritsutsu hototogisu hitodanome naru ne koso nakarure

English Translation
My heart alone
has gone drifting to the sky,
O cuckoo, and yet
at your cry that only raised my hopes,
it is I who weep aloud
Meaning
My heart alone has drifted off into the sky as I waited, O cuckoo; your cry only raised my hopes in vain, and it is I who end up weeping aloud.
Commentary
Book Eleven Love Poems I 1047

Headnote: "To someone who asked whether she had heard the cuckoo sing."
This is the sixth poem of the sequence on love sung through the things of the Fifth Month. Her heart went drifting to the sky as she waited for the cuckoo, but its voice only raised her hopes, and she herself is left weeping aloud. According to the headnote, it answers someone who asked whether she had heard the cuckoo sing.
The author, "Uma no Naishi," continues from the preceding poem and was a lady-in-waiting and poet of the mid-Heian period. She is one of the Later Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals.

The first line, "kokoro nomi," means "my heart alone."
The second line, "sora ni naritsutsu," means "going absent, drifting to the sky," with the sky of the singing cuckoo resonating. It echoes "kokoro no sora ni" in 1010, Korenari's poem.
The third line, "hototogisu," takes up the cuckoo of the question, set as if calling out to it.
In the fourth line, "hitodanome" means raising someone's hopes with nothing to rely on.
In the last line, the emphatic "koso" is resolved by "rure," the realis form of the spontaneous "ru": I find myself weeping aloud. She longed for the cuckoo's voice, found it unreliable, and wept herself, so parrying the question "did you hear it?" It stands at the close of the cuckoo poems involving Uma no Naishi that have run since 1043.
Author
Uma no Naishi
Source
Shin Kokin Wakashu
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