He heard the first cuckoo at the beginning of April.
Because he'd been feeling on edge, maybe,
from an inclination to order the chaos, maybe,
he wanted to know which notes the cuckoo sang.

He sat waiting with his pitch pipe
next afternoon: When
would the cuckoo sing?
He finally achieved it:
The pitch pipe told no lies.
Si-sol were the cuckoo's notes.

The discovery shook the countryside.
Everyone wanted to prove whether truly those
were the notes that the cuckoo sang.
The measurements were not in harmony.
Each had his or her own truth.
One said it was fa-re, another mi-do.
No one managed to agree.

Meanwhile the cuckoo went on singing in the forest,
not mi-do, not fa-re, not si-sol, either.
As it had a thousand years before,
the cuckoo sang cuccu, cuccu.