Komayama ni naku hototogisu izumigawa watari o tōmi koko ni kayowazu

狛山に鳴く霍公鳥泉川
渡りを遠みここに通はず

Roma-ji: Komayama ni naku hototogisu izumigawa watari o tōmi koko ni kayowazu
English Translation: On Koma Mountain
the cuckoo is calling out;
Izumi River—
since the crossing is so far,
it does not come over here
Meaning: The cuckoo calls on Koma Mountain, but because the crossing of the Izumi River is so far away, it never comes over here.
Commentary: Book Six Miscellaneous Poems 1058

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Five envoys"
The poem says that the cuckoo calling on Koma Mountain does not come over to this side because the crossing of the Izumi River is far. The long poem immediately before it (1053) is the second of the two "poems in praise of the new capital at Kuni"; it praises the palace of Futagi with scenes of wooded mountains, the pure sound of the rushing shallows, the bush warbler of spring and the stag of autumn, and closes with "the great palace site that shall not change even for a hundred ages." This is the last of its five envoys, playfully attributing the cuckoo's voice heard from Koma Mountain across the river to the bird's not crossing the water, and so praising the richness of the scenery around the capital.
Koma Mountain is said to be a mountain on the banks of the Izumi River near the Kuni capital.
The twenty-one poems from 1047 through 1067, the last poem of the book, are covered by the closing left note: "The above twenty-one poems appear in the Tanabe no Sakimaro Collection." According to this note they were taken from the Tanabe no Sakimaro Collection, and they are thought to be Sakimaro's own compositions.
The poet, Tanabe no Sakimaro, was a poet of the mid-Nara period; in Tenpyō 20 (748) he served as a clerk of the Office of Sake Brewing and acted as an envoy for the Minister of the Left, Tachibana no Moroe. He is regarded as one of the representative poets of the last phase of the Man'yōshū, carrying on the tradition of ceremonial long poems at court.
In the original text, a note of a variant, "one version says: is it because the crossing is far that it does not come?" follows the end of the poem, showing that a tradition existed in which the fourth and final lines read that way. Since this note is not part of the poem itself it has been removed, and here the main text's "since the crossing is so far, it does not come over here" is adopted.

While the bush warbler of the preceding poem, 1057, "comes, singing, echoing," the cuckoo in this poem "does not come over here," so that a bird that comes to sing and a bird that does not, a bird of spring and a bird of summer, form a pair. "Izumi River" is also the same river name as in the first line of the first of the five envoys, 1054, binding the beginning and end of the five poems with the same river.
The first line, "On Koma Mountain," names the mountain across the river, showing where the cuckoo's voice comes from.
The second line, "the cuckoo is calling out," presents the cuckoo as the bird that heralds summer.
The third line, "Izumi River," names the river flowing through the Kuni capital, placed here as the river separating Koma Mountain from this side.
The fourth line, "since the crossing is so far," means "because the ford is distant," the "o ... -mi" construction expressing a reason.
The final line, "it does not come over here," closes firmly with the negative "-zu." It ends with a light, playful explanation of the feeling for a bird whose voice is heard but which never shows itself.
Author: Tanabe no Sakimaro
Source: Manyoshu
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