Waga gotoku mono ya kanashiki hototogisu toki zo to mo naku yo tada nakuramu - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

わがごとくものや悲しきほととぎす
時ぞともなく夜ただ鳴くらむ

Roma-ji: Waga gotoku mono ya kanashiki hototogisu toki zo to mo naku yo tada nakuramu
English Translation: Just the same as me,
are you sorrowing, cuckoo,
that regardless of
the hour you keep on crying
all throughout the night?
Meaning: Cuckoo, are you sad just as I am? Is that why you keep crying out through the night, no matter the hour?
Commentary: Book Twelve Love Poems II 578

Headnote: "Topic unknown"
The poet addresses the cuckoo that cries all night at any hour, asking whether it too is sad as he is. His own image, weeping through each night for love, is overlaid on the ceaselessly crying bird, and naku, "to cry" of a bird, resonates with naku, "to weep." Together with the next poem, two poems on the cuckoo stand side by side.
Fujiwara no Toshiyuki was a poet of the early Heian period, the son of Fujiwara no Fujimaro. He served as Head Chamberlain and Captain of the Right Military Guards and was known as a master calligrapher. He is one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals.

First line, "waga gotoku": "like me," seeing the cuckoo as sharing his circumstances.
Second line, "mono ya kanashiki": ya is an interrogative binding particle resolved by the attributive kanashiki. He asks whether it is somehow sad, and the poem breaks here.
Third line, "hototogisu": the bird that represents summer, said to call sharply even at night. It is placed as a term of address. The next poem, 579, also places hototogisu in its third line, so the two poems sing of the same bird in the same position.
Fourth line, "toki zo to mo naku": toki zo to mo nashi means without any set time, constantly.
Fifth line, "yo tada nakuramu": tada means single-mindedly, and ramu conjectures a cause: "why does it keep crying all night?" The poem closes by overlaying his own weeping voice on the bird's cries.
Author: Fujiwara no Toshiyuki
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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