Mukashi ni mo aranu waga mi ni hototogisu matsu kokoro koso kawarazarikere - Shika Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

昔にもあらぬ我が身にほととぎす
待つ心こそ変はらざりけれ

Roma-ji: Mukashi ni mo aranu waga mi ni hototogisu matsu kokoro koso kawarazarikere
English Translation: Though I am no more
what I was in days gone by,
for the cuckoo still
this heart that waits and waits
has not changed in the least.
Meaning: I am no longer what I once was, yet my heart that waits for the cuckoo has not changed at all.
Commentary: Book Two Summer Poems 55

The poem contrasts a self whose circumstances and looks have changed utterly with a heart that still waits for the cuckoo just as before. Lament for the changing self coexists with the youthful eagerness of awaiting the season.
From here the book enters its sequence of cuckoo poems. Following "has never changed" in poem 53, the contrast of change and constancy recurs, and the poem shares the words "wait" and "myself" with the next poem, 56.

First line, "days gone by," introduces a comparison with the poet's former self.
Second line refers to a self that is no longer what it was. The particle ni leads concessively to the final line.
Third line names the cuckoo, whose first call is eagerly awaited in early summer, and a run of cuckoo poems follows.
Fourth line uses the emphatic particle koso, which governs kere in the final line.
Fifth line ends with kere, the realis form of keri required by koso, expressing the realization that the heart has not changed.
Author: Suo no Naishi
Source: Shika Wakashu
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