Tsurezure to nagamuru sora no hototogisu tou ni tsukete zo ne wa nakare keru - Gosen Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

つれづれとながむる空の郭公
訪ふにつけてぞ音はなかれける

Roma-ji: Tsurezure to nagamuru sora no hototogisu tou ni tsukete zo ne wa nakare keru
English Translation: Idly, as I gaze
at the sky of the long rains,
the little cuckoo
comes to visit, and with that
I cannot help but cry aloud
Meaning: As I gaze idly, lost in thought, at the sky of the long rains, the cuckoo comes calling—and with that I cannot help but cry aloud.
Commentary: Book Four Summer Poems 185

Headnote: "During the long rains of the Fifth Month, when he went to a woman whom he had long stopped visiting, the woman wrote this."
As she gazes listlessly at the sky of the long rains, lost in thought, the cuckoo comes calling and she cannot help but weep aloud. Likening the long-absent man to the cuckoo, she shows how, rather than rejoicing at his visit, the pain of all this time wells up in her.
According to the headnote, during the long rains of the Fifth Month a man visited a woman he had long ceased to see, and the woman composed this.
The poet is listed as "anonymous," and the composer's name has not come down to us. According to the headnote, the poet was a woman whose lover had long ceased to visit.

The first line, "Tsurezure to," means "idly, with nothing to do," expressing the long days of waiting.
In the second line, "nagamuru" is a pivot word joining "nagame," long rain, and "nagamuru," to gaze lost in thought. Like "nagamekuraseru" in 182 of this book, it lays brooding over the long rains of the Fifth Month.
The third line, "hototogisu," likens the man who has come at last to the cuckoo.
The fourth line, "tou ni tsukete zo," means "with its visit," with "zo" as a particle. It overlays the cuckoo's coming to sing with the man's coming to call.
In the last line, "nakare" is a pivot word joining the cuckoo's singing and her own weeping, with "re" as the continuative form of the spontaneous auxiliary "ru." The attributive "keru" completes the kakarimusubi pattern with "zo" in the fourth line.
Author: Unknown Poet
Source: Gosen Wakashu
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