Satsukiyami kannabiyama no hototogisu tsumagoi surashi naku ne kanashimo

五月闇神奈備山の時鳥
妻恋ひすらし鳴く音悲しも

Roma-ji: Satsukiyami kannabiyama no hototogisu tsumagoi surashi naku ne kanashimo
English Translation: In the fifth-month dark
on Kannabi Mountain
the hototogisu
must be longing for its mate—
how sorrowful its singing.
Meaning: In the fifth-month dark, the hototogisu of Kannabi Mountain must be longing for its mate—how sad its singing sounds.
Commentary: Summer Poems 146

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "The hototogisu in the depth of night"
Hearing the hototogisu calling on Kannabi Mountain in the dark of the fifth month, the poet takes its song to be a cry of longing for its mate. In a plain, Man'yō-like cadence, he lays the sorrow of love over the bird's voice.
In the source text consulted, a character in the last line could not be read and has been supplied from the Teika text's naku ne kanashimo.

Line 1 shares the opening "fifth-month dark" with the preceding poem, 145, continuing the sequence on the hototogisu in the depth of night.
Line 2: Kannabi Mountain, a "mountain where a god dwells," is a poetic place name for such sites as Mount Miwa or the Tatsuta hills in Yamato. The next poem, 147, also names Kannabi Mountain, so the two form a pair set on the same mountain.
Line 3 sets the hototogisu as the singer.
Line 4: rashi is a grounded inference, judging from the sadness of the voice that the bird longs for its mate; the poem pauses here. The theme of the bird yearning for its mate is shared with "calling its own mate" in the next poem.
Line 5: mo is an exclamatory particle, a Man'yō-style ending.
Author: Minamoto no Sanetomo
Source: Kinkaishu
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