Kokinshu #157

(from the same contest)

    Are you crying out
that you aren't satisfied,
    O mountain cuckoo,
by summer nights that brighten
just when it seems to be dark?

—9 October 2011

Original by Mibu no Tadamine playing not only on the "sing" and "weep" homophones of naku but also on homophones (used once each) of aku meaning "brighten" and "tire of." Given that Tadamine's smooth cleverness is usually more important than his arrangement of images, I had to almost completely reverse the syntax of the original (I managed to move the cuckoo only halfway up the poem) to achieve the same effect in English. This can, by assuming the speaker has displaced his own disappointment, be read as an elliptical love poem: "my night (with her) was not long enough to be satisfying."


kururu ka to
mireba akenuru
natsu no yo o
akazu to ya naku
yamahototogisu

---L.