Yoru no toko o naki ukasanan hototogisu mono omou sode o toi ni kitaraba

夜の床をなき浮かさなん郭公
物思ふ袖を訪ひに来たらば

Roma-ji: Yoru no toko o naki ukasanan hototogisu mono omou sode o toi ni kitaraba
English Translation: This bed of the night—
weep it afloat, I pray you,
O cuckoo,
if you come to call upon
my sleeves in their brooding grief.
Meaning: Cry until my bed at night floats on tears, O cuckoo, if you come to visit my sleeves that are wet with brooding.
Commentary: One Hundred Poems 1471

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Ten Poems on the Cuckoo"
The ninth of the ten poems on the cuckoo. If the cuckoo comes to visit sleeves wet with brooding, let it cry so that his bed at night floats on tears.
The cuckoo's voice was long held to stir melancholy thoughts. The fierce exaggeration—let the tears it draws set the bed afloat—conveys the depth of his brooding. Among the cuckoo poems it carries a note of love, foreshadowing the ten love poems to come.

First line, “yoru no toko o”: the bed where one sleeps at night; the line has an extra syllable.
Second line, “naki ukasanan”: naki is a pivot word for the cuckoo's singing and his own weeping; nan is a particle of wish toward another, "cry my bed afloat on tears."
Third line, “hototogisu”: an address; the poem breaks here.
Fourth line, “mono omou sode o”: sleeves wet with brooding tears.
Fifth line, “toi ni kitaraba”: if you come to visit, the inversion stating the condition of the wish.
Author: Saigyō
Source: Sankashu
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