Kokinshu #137
Friday, 23 September 2011 07:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer Topic unknown.
O mountain cuckoo
waiting until the Fifth Month,
would that even now
you fluttered your wings and sang.
Your voice of old from last year ...
satsuki matsu
yamahototogusi
uchi-habuki
ima mo nakanamu
kozo no furugoe
---L.
O mountain cuckoo
waiting until the Fifth Month,
would that even now
you fluttered your wings and sang.
Your voice of old from last year ...
—1 September 2011
Original author unknown. The cuckoo generally starts singing in the lunisolar Fifth Month, roughly early-June to early-July. It's possible to read the last line as the subject of "sing" displaced out of normal sentence order, giving something like "you fluttered your wings and sang / with the same voice as last year" -- if there was some way in English to mimic the displacement that didn't make me wince.satsuki matsu
yamahototogusi
uchi-habuki
ima mo nakanamu
kozo no furugoe
---L.