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Kokinshu #161
Written when courtiers drinking wine in the Attendance Chamber summoned him and told him to write a poem on "waiting for the cuckoo."
The cuckoo's voice
cannot be heard at all here.
Mountain echoes, though --
might they not make reflections
of sounds that are sung elsewhere?
hototogisu
koe mo kikoezu
yamabiko wa
hoka ni naku ne o
kotae ya wa senu
---L.
The cuckoo's voice
cannot be heard at all here.
Mountain echoes, though --
might they not make reflections
of sounds that are sung elsewhere?
—13 October 2011
Original by Ôshikôchi no Mitsune. The Attendance Chamber in the imperial residence was where courtiers of the Fourth and Fifth Rank, who had the privilege of attending on the emperor in person, waited to do so; it's believed that Mitsune was only about Eighth Rank at the time. The poem ostensibly flatters his superiors by implicitly comparing them to echoes of the emperor's authority, but I wonder whether, in their cups, they noticed that's not very flattering given he marked the question as a rhetorical one expecting a negative answer. "Here" is interpretive, and arguably not needed given that "though" already renders how the echoes are marked as a contrast. Sequencewise, note the momentary regression to before the cuckoos started up, back in #140.hototogisu
koe mo kikoezu
yamabiko wa
hoka ni naku ne o
kotae ya wa senu
---L.