Kaoru ka ni yosouru yori wa hototogisu kikabaya onaji koe ya masaru to - Izumi Shikibu Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

かほる香によそふるよりは郭公
きかはや同し聲やまさると

Roma-ji: Kaoru ka ni yosouru yori wa hototogisu kikabaya onaji koe ya masaru to
English Translation: Rather than compare
you to the fragrance of the flowers,
I would hear, cuckoo,
whether your song is just the same
or finer than the one I knew
Meaning: Rather than recall the one I lost by likening him to this fragrance, I would hear the cuckoo itself, to learn whether its voice is the same as his, or finer still.
Commentary: 1 The Mandarin Orange Blossom

Past the tenth day of the fourth month of Chōhō 5 (1003), Izumi Shikibu was passing her days grieving over a love more fleeting than a dream. As the shade beneath the trees deepened, she sat gazing with quiet feeling at the green grass atop the earthen wall, which no one else bothered to notice, when she sensed someone near the lattice fence. It was the page boy who had served the late prince. When she asked why he had stayed away so long, he explained that he had been visiting mountain temples, but feeling forlorn he had begun serving the Prince of the Dazaifu in place of his late master. The prince had asked him kindly whether he still called on her and, handing him a sprig of mandarin orange blossom, said, "Give her this, and see what she makes of it." Without thinking, she murmured, "of the one I knew long ago."
The woman is Izumi Shikibu, daughter of Ōe no Masamune and, as the wife of Tachibana no Michisada, Governor of Izumi, mother of Koshikibu no Naishi. The Prince of the Dazaifu is Prince Atsumichi, fourth son of Emperor Reizei, so called because he served as Governor-General of the Dazaifu. The late prince was Atsumichi's elder brother by the same mother, Prince Tametaka, who had been Izumi Shikibu's lover and died in the sixth month of Chōhō 4 (1002). A page boy was a youth who attended to the personal errands of a nobleman.
When the boy asked what reply he should carry, she felt awkward answering in plain words, and thinking that a brief poem would do no harm with a prince who had no reputation for dalliance, she handed him this one.
The prince replied at once with "Onaji e ni nakitsutsu orishi hototogisu koe wa kawaranu mono to shiranan," warning the boy, "Tell no one of this. It looks too much like a love affair." This exchange over the orange blossom marks the beginning of the love between Izumi Shikibu and Prince Atsumichi.
The source poem is an anonymous poem in the Summer section of the Kokin Wakashū, which says that catching the scent of the orange blossom that waits for the fifth month brings back the fragrance of the sleeves of someone loved long ago.

The opening lines mean "rather than liken him to the fragrance," drawing on the source poem's scent of an old love's sleeves and carrying on the feeling of the words she had just murmured.
The cuckoo of the third line, a bird of early summer paired with the orange blossom, stands for the prince himself. The lower verses mean "I would hear whether your voice is the same as his, or finer," combining a particle of wishing with a particle of question, placed at the end by inversion. Inviting the prince to send not a scent but his own voice, that is, a letter, while hinting at a comparison with his brother, the poem joins boldness with wit and makes a fitting overture to the whole tale.
Author: Izumi Shikibu
Source: Izumi Shikibu Nikki
Next Poem: Onaji e ni nakitsutsu orishi hototogisu koe wa kawaranu mono to shiranan