Towards the moon-hidden days [last days] of the Rice-Sprout month I went for a certain reason to a temple at Higashiyama.[42] On the way the nursery beds for rice-plants were filled with water, and the fields were green all over with the young growing rice. It was a smile-presenting sight. It gave a feeling of loneliness to see the dark shadow of the mountain close before me. In the lovely evenings water-rails chattered in the fields.
The water-rails cackle as if they were knocking at the gate,
But who would be deceived into opening the door, saying,
Our friend has come along the mountain path in the dark night?
As the place was near the Reizan Temple I went there to worship. Arriving so far I was fatigued, and drank from a stone-lined well beside the mountain temple, scooping the water into the hollow of my hand. My friend said, "I could never have enough of this water." "Is it the first time," I asked, "that you have tasted the satisfying sweetness of a mountain well drunk from the hollow of your hand?" She said, "It is sweeter than to drink from a shallow spring, which becomes muddy even from the drops which fall from the hand which has scooped it up."[43] We came home from the temple in the full brightness of evening sunshine, and had a clear view of Kioto below us.
My friend, who had said that a spring becomes muddy even with drops falling into it, had to go back to the Capital.
I was sorry to part with her and sent word the next morning:
When the evening sun descends behind the mountain peak,
Will you forget that it is I who gaze with longing
Towards the place where you are?
The holy voices of the priests reciting sutras in their morning service could be heard from my house and I opened the door. It was dim early dawn; mist veiled the green forest, which was thicker and darker than in the time of flowers or red leaves. The sky seemed clouded this lovely morning. Cuckoos were singing on the near-by trees.
O for a friend—that we might see and listen together!
O the beautiful dawn in the mountain village!—
The repeated sound of cuckoos near and far away.
On that moon-hidden day cuckoos sung clamorously on trees towards the glen. "In the Royal City poets may be awaiting you, cuckoos, yet you sing here carelessly from morning till night!"
One who sat near me said: "Do you think that there is one person, at least, in the Capital who is listening to cuckoos, and thinking of us at this moment?"—and then: