Hototogisu nani no kokoro zo tachibana no tama nuku tsuki shi kinaki toyomuru

霍公鳥何の心ぞ橘の
玉貫く月し来鳴き響むる

Roma-ji: Hototogisu nani no kokoro zo tachibana no tama nuku tsuki shi kinaki toyomuru
English Translation: Hototogisu,
what is it that moves your heart?
In the very month
we thread orange flowers as beads
you come to sing and ring out
Meaning: Hototogisu, what is in your heart? It is just in the month when we thread orange blossoms into festival beads that you come and fill the air with your song.
Commentary: Book Seventeen 3912

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "The oranges have begun to bloom and the hototogisu flits and calls. Facing such a season, how could I not give voice to my feelings? So I have made three tanka, merely to disperse the knots of gloom"
The poet asks the hototogisu what moves it to come and make its song ring out in the very month when orange blossoms are strung as festival beads. On the third day of the fourth month of 741, Yakamochi, serving as a palace attendant at the new capital of Kuni, wrote these three poems in reply to the hototogisu poems his younger brother Fumimochi had sent from the old house in Nara (3909 and 3910). Taking up the tachibana of his brother's poem, he praises the bird with a kind of wonder, as if it knew the season of the flowers.
The poet, Ōtomo no Yakamochi, was the son of the Major Counselor Ōtomo no Tabito. Appointed Governor of Etchū in 746, he spent five years there, later serving as Junior Counselor and Governor of Inaba before rising to Middle Counselor. He is thought to have played a central role in compiling the Man'yōshū.
The left note reads, "The above were sent in reply on the third day of the fourth month by Ōtomo no Sukune Yakamochi, palace attendant, from the Kuni capital to his younger brother Fumimochi."

First line, "hototogisu": an address to the bird; the next poem, 3913, also opens with "hototogisu."
Second line, "nani no kokoro zo": "what is in your heart?"—a question that breaks the poem here, with the reason given in the lower verse in inverted order.
Third line, "tachibana no": taking up "tachibana wa," the first line of Fumimochi's 3909.
Fourth line, "tama nuku tsuki shi": the month when orange blossoms are threaded as festival beads, that is, the fifth month; shi is emphatic.
Fifth line, "kinaki toyomuru": toyomu means to make one's voice ring out; ending in the attributive form, the poem leaves the answer unstated and lets its feeling linger.
Author: Otomo no Yakamochi
Source: Manyoshu
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