Left (Tie).
荒れめれば縄絶つ駒をいかにしてつなぎとむらん野邊の初草
| aremereba nawa tatsu koma o ika ni shite tsunagitomuran nobe no hatsugusa |
Seeming driven wild and Tether snapping is my steed: How might He be tied, By the fresh grasses on the plain? |
37
Right (Tie).
けさ見れば澤の若芹下根とけ緑にはゆる雪のむら消え
| kesa mireba sawa no wakazeri shitane toke midori ni hayuru yuki no mura kie |
Looking this morning on The fresh dropwort by the marsh, Melting round the roots – So greenly growing – Snow spots were vanishing. |
38
The Right team comment here that the Left’s poem is in the same spirit as Shun’e’s poem in the Shikashū (SKS I: 12). Into this has been inserted the additional idea of ‘tether snapping’ (nawa tatsu), and this is ‘grating on the ear’.
The Left team, in turn, say that the Right’s poem contains both ‘melting’ (toke) and ‘vanishing’ (kie) and this is an error. (Japanese poetics held that a poem should not contain two words with identical meanings.) It is also ‘undesirable’ to use ‘growing’ (hayuru).
Shunzei comments that the Right team have correctly identified the resemblance of the Left’s poem to that by the Monk Shun’e, and in such poems, it is commonplace not to avoid this. However, as in Taira no Sadafun’s poem in the Shūishū (SIS XVIII: 1185). ‘Tether snapping’ (nawa tatsu) is used of approaching a woman. (Nawa tatsu 縄絶つ ‘tether snapping’ is homophonous with na wa tatsu 名は立つ ‘one’s name would arise (in conversation)’ – in other words, ‘be gossiped about’.) Here, though, it is simply used about breaking a rope, or cord, and ‘is this not mundane?’ The Right’s poem starts ‘very well’, but to use ‘growing’ (hayuru) is ‘not good at all’. Both poems are ‘commonplace’ and so neither deserves a win.