The Right state: the Left’s poem has no faults to indicate. The Left state: the Right’s poem sounds like it is chopping kindling that the woodsman will do no more.
In judgement: ‘Travelling to the mountain deeps and back, the woodsmen’ (miyama ni kayou shizu) should ‘fell the tree of grief’ (nageki o koru), but in the poem they ‘do not fell’ (koranu) it – I wonder how appropriate this is. This conception seems to be one not relating to grief, but simply to tree-felling. ‘I, too, in fires of passion must burn on’ (omoi wa ware mo korinubeshi) seems somewhat difficult to interpret, but I must say that the configuration of the final section is superb.
[One of] three poems composed at a banquet on the 3rd day of the Third Month, with an imperial envoy sent to inspect the border guards and messengers from the Ministry of War in attendance.
朝な朝な上がる雲雀になりてしか都に行きて早帰り来む
asana asana
agaru pibari ni
naritesika
miyako ni yukite
paya kaperikon
Every single morning
Soars the skylark –
If only I were she, then
To the capital I’d go, and
Swiftly return home!
asa tode no
kimi ga ayupi wo
nurasu tuyu para
payaku oki
idetutu ware mo
mosuso nurasana
In the morning, opening the door
Bound up, your belt
Will be drenched by the dewy fields;
Swiftly rising
I, too, shall venture out and
Soak my skirt-hem…