Hyakunin Isshu #62

[lnhammer]

    Though the feigned cock's crow
while the world is wrapped in night
    may deceive others,
you will never be allowed
to pass our Meetinghills Gate.

—2 May 2010

Original by Sei Shônagon, author of The Pillow Book, daughter of Motosuke (#42), and lady-in-waiting to not Shôshi but her older cousin and rival, Empress Teishi (daughter of #54). Sei is an alternate reading for the kanji read as kiyo in her family name, Kiyowara; Shônagon is a middling court title for men, possibly held by her father. Scholars speculate that her personal name may have been Nagiko. As for the poem, as she tells it in The Pillow Book, the day after Teishi's brother had left during the evening, he sent witty regrets for having been called away by the crowing cock, and Shônagon called him on the embellishment by alluding to an episode in Chinese history in which a prince escaped captivity by imitating a cock's crow, fooling guards into thinking it was dawning and so opening the city gate. The Ôsaka ("Meeting Hill") gate is the same as Semimaru's (#10), northeast of the capital, also doing a pivoty double-meaning for a meeting with her.


yo o komete
tori no sorane wa
hakaru tomo
yo ni ausaka no
seki wa yurusaji

---L.