Kokinshu #140

[lnhammer]

(Topic unknown.)

    The Fifth Month must have
come without my noticing:
    I hear the cuckoo
of the foot-weary mountains
is indeed singing now.

—21 September 2011

(Original author unknown.) Finally the cuckoo season arrives -- or so we're told, as the "hear" part (the final -naru) could indicate either direct auditory experience or hearsay report. Here's a use of a stock epithet that simply doesn't translate well: "foot-weary" (ashibiki no -- see #59) describes only the "mountain" part of the compound noun "mountain-cuckoo," not the bird itself. A similar construction is possible in Old English, but thanks to Norman soldiers trying to pick up Saxon girls, we don't speak that and so I had to split the noun. Not the most brilliant poem ever, but something to this effect was needed for the sequence.


itsu no ma ni
satsuki kinuramu
ashibiki no
yamahototogisu
ima zo nakunaru

---L.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

You gotta love how after all that "Ooh, I wanna hear the cuckoo, ooh how I long to hear the cuckoo" the actual appearance of the cuckoo is in the sense of "Oh yeah I guess he's singing in the mountains now or something." Like, I really love nature and all, but I don't *go* north of the Imperial palace, okay?

[lnhammer]

And following that, in contrast to the anticipation, we get a spate of "dang it, cuckoo, you're harshing my squee here."

---L.