The Burke Collection
The Sixth Month of Teika’s Poems on Flowers and Birds of the Twelve Months (定家詠十二ヶ月花鳥図のうち六月)
Click to enlarge
57-1

Catalogue information

Edo period, 18th century

Handscroll; ink and color on paper

18.3 x 567 cm (7 1/4 in. x 18 ft. 7 1/4 in.)

Donated to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York by the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation in 2015

Literature

Kasanoin and Heinrich 1998, p. 61.
Kasanoin, Jikun, and Amy Vladeck Heinrich
1998
Seasons of Sacred Celebration: Flowers and Poetry from an Imperial Convent. New York: Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies and Weatherhill, 1998.

See full bibliography

See also

This artwork was published as catalogue entry 57 in Volume I of Art through a Lifetime.

Additional details

Text

For the flower and bird representing the sixth month:

Tokonatsu [Chinese Pink]

I even miss the weather of this parched month, ­usually spurned for / its hot sun, because it is the month when the Chinese pink of “everlasting summer” / comes into bloom.

U [Cormorant]

As swiftly as the flares disappear upstream in the river / where the cormorants fish on this short summer night, / this month of parched weather, too, / will soon be gone.