Kokinshu #150

(Topic unknown.)

    All of the cuckoos
of the foot-dragging mountains
    continually
call out with voices that say
nothing but, "Who is better?"

—2 October 2011

(Original author unknown.) Back to the mountains -- with the same epithet+compound noun problem as #140. Here the epithet plays, a little bit, into the endless song. Vaunting implies competition, so I understand hototogisu as plural here. One side effect of this is to make it purely about the birds, without the possibility of competing with a speaker who is also crying.


ashibiki no
yamahototogisu
orihaete
tare ka masaru to
ne o nomi zo naku

---L.