Yomosugara kuina yori ke ni nakunaku zo maki no toguchi ni tatakiwabitsuru - Murasaki Shikibu Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

よもすがら水鶏よりけになくなくぞ
槙の戸口にたたき侘びつる

Roma-ji: Yomosugara kuina yori ke ni nakunaku zo maki no toguchi ni tatakiwabitsuru
English Translation: All through the long night,
more than the water rail itself,
weeping, crying out,
at the door of cypress wood
I knocked until I despaired
Meaning: All night long, weeping more than the water rail that cries like a knock upon the door, I knocked in vain at your cypress door until I despaired.
Commentary: 41 The Exchange of the Water Rail

One night, as Murasaki slept in her room in the gallery, she heard someone knocking at the door. Too frightened to respond, she kept silent and did not open it until dawn. The next morning, a poem arrived from the one who had knocked.
The text does not name the visitor. The Shinchokusen Wakashū, however, attributes the poem to Fujiwara no Michinaga.
The next morning, the visitor sent this poem, likening his resentment at knocking all night without being let in to the water rail, whose cry was said to sound like knocking at a door.
Murasaki replied with "Tada naraji to bakari tataku kuina yue akete wa ika ni kuyashikaramashi," answering that she had been right not to open the door.
The poem was included in the Shinchokusen Wakashū as the work of Fujiwara no Michinaga.

The opening lines mean "all night long, even more than the water rail." The call of the water rail was said to resemble knocking at a door, and in waka the bird is sung of as knocking.
In the third line, "nakunaku" carries both the crying of the bird and the poet's own weeping. The lower verses say that he knocked at the cypress-wood door until he could knock no more, the verb expressing helpless exhaustion, sealed by an emphatic construction ending in a perfective auxiliary. Using the water rail, a summer image, the poem wraps the resentment of rejection in wit.
Author: Fujiwara no Michinaga (not named in the text; attributed in the Shinchokusen Wakashū)
Source: Murasaki Shikibu Nikki
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