Summer I: 28

Left (Win).

夏の夜は更けゆく程やなかるらん暮るればやがて明るしのゝめ

natsu no yo wa
fukeyuku hodo ya
nakaruran
kurureba yagate
akuru shinonome
On a summer night
Seems to grow late there’s
No time;
It falls and then
‘Tis the dark before bright dawn.

Lord Kanemune.

235

Right.

暮れぬとてたれこめたればやがて又ひまこそ白め夏の夜な夜な

kurenu tote
tare kometareba
yagate mata
hima kozo shirame
natsu no yonayona
Night’s fallen and
I’m curtained in my bed
And then
Through the cracks comes light
Night after summer night!

The Provisional Master of the Empress’ Household Office.

236

The Right state that, ‘The Left’s “seems…no time” feels overly feeble.’ The Left reply that the poet is exhausted by the heat.

Shunzei says, ‘The gentlemen of the Right have criticised the Left as overly feeble, but I wonder if their own poems are always forceful? In the summer, even if it has got completely dark, there’s no need to shut oneself up in one’s curtains, as in the Right’s poem. The Left must win.’

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