Kokinshu #151

(Topic unknown.)

    After all this time,
cuckoo, do not return home
    to the mountains --
as long as your voice holds out,
sing here, you, in my garden.

—1 October 2011

(Original author unknown.) And the mini-arc ends with backtracking out of the mountains, trying to prevent returning there -- I suspect the reason this isn't in front of #150, as befits the sequence, is that it links rhetorically into #152 so very neatly. An impatient adverb, here rendered colloquially, and two direct commands give this a brusk tone. More literally, it's sing "in/at my house" which, I've come to realize, is understood to mean inside the grounds. Compare to #131 for a bush warbler version.


imasarani
yama e kaeru na
hototogisu
koe no kagiri wa
waga yado ni nake

---L.