Kokinshu #140

(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.