Kokinshu #160

[lnhammer]

Written on hearing the cuckoo sing.

    Resounding even
the sky during summer rains --
    cuckoo, what is it
you are resenting so much
you sing through the night like that?

—14 October 2011

Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. I don't usually think of a rainy night as having the sort of openness that lets sounds resound, which is a shame as aside from the sense issue, it's a lovely line. What with that and a lower half that's almost clunky, this is not Tsurayuki's best effort -- I gotta wonder if the editors needed another cranky-about-cuckoos poem with sound imagery that played into next poem and had nothing else on hand. Ushi could mean "regret"/"be sad" as much as "resent"/"be bitter" -- it's a rather broad-spectrum emotion word, and you get to pick how to read it.


samidare no
sora mo todoro ni
hototogisu
nani o ushi to ka
yo tada nakuramu

---L.