Hototogisu naku ya satsuki no ayamegusa ayame mo shiranu koi mo suru kana - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

郭公鳴くや五月のあやめ草
あやめも知らぬ恋もするかな

Roma-ji: Hototogisu naku ya satsuki no ayamegusa ayame mo shiranu koi mo suru kana
English Translation: The cuckoo sings out
in the fifth month when the iris
sweet flag is in bloom
and like one who knows no sense
I have fallen into love
Meaning: Like the sweet flag of the fifth month, when the cuckoo sings, I have fallen into a love so deep that I no longer know reason or order.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems I 469

Headnote: "Topic unknown"
Using the cuckoo and the sweet flag of the fifth month as a preface, the poem sings of a love so consuming that the lover loses all sense of reason. The early-summer imagery of the upper verse calls up, through a shared sound, the phrase "knowing no ayame" in the lower verse, turning the seasonal scene into the intensity of a heart that has lost its bearings. Placed at the very head of the five books of love poems in the Kokinshu, it shows the bewilderment of a love that has only just begun, before the lovers have even met, and it is celebrated as a fitting opening to the whole love section.

First line, "The cuckoo": the representative bird of summer, whose voice was thought to stir longing. By opening the love books with a summer image, the anthology carries the mood of the summer book into the books of love. The bird's name is shared with the "mountain cuckoo" of poem 499 in this book.
Second line, "sings in the fifth month": the particle ya is an exclamatory interjection that impresses upon us the season when the cuckoo sings.
Third line, "the sweet flag": the iris-like plant hung from the eaves at the festival of the fifth day of the fifth month. Lines one through three form a preface that leads, through sound, into the ayame of the fourth line.
Fourth line, "knowing no ayame": here ayame means the pattern or order of things, and it plays on the same sound as the plant's name. It describes a heart so disordered that it cannot tell reason from unreason.
Fifth line, "I have fallen into love": kana is an exclamatory final particle. Poems 490 and 498 of this book close with the same final line, "koi mo suru kana," echoing one another across the book.
Author: Unknown Poet
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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