Kokinshu #163

Written on hearing the cuckoo singing in a place where he had once lived.

    Is it that past times
are longed for even today,
    O cuckoo, that you
have come here crying aloud
even in this former home?

—17 Oct 2011

Original by Mibu no Tadamine. Who longs for times past is not ambiguous in the original, but the implication is that the speaker does as well. Again, Tadamine takes a standard conceit and tweaks it into something slightly clever. My repetition of "even" bothers me a little, as of his uses of the word (mo), one is buried in a compound (shimo) -- but alternative renderings of that highly emphatic particle just didn't sound right.


mukashi-be ya
ima mo koishiki
hototogisu
furusato ni shimo
nakite kitsuramu

---L.