Round Seven

Left (Tie)

わがさかりやよいづかたへゆきにけむしらぬおきなにみをばゆづりて

wa ga sakari yayo izukata e yukinikemu shiranu okina ni mi oba yuzurite

My glory days, O, where have they Gone? An unfamiliar old man Has taken my place…

Lord Kiyosuke
113

Right

いかなればわがひとつらのかかるらむうらやましきはあきのかりがね

ika nareba wa ga hitotsura no kakaruramu urayamashiki wa aki no kari ga ne

What has happened, that My brothers, one and all, Should go so far? How I envy The cries of autumn geese…

Lord Sanetsuna
114

Both of these poems of the Left and Right are, once again, suited to their poets. The Left appears to have a charming conception, looking back on more prosperous times which have now gone—just as anyone would. This is certainly something to resent and yet, in his glory days he was a man of high renown, or someone with great responsibilities among lower officialdom, or even in the Inner Palace Guards or Great Council of State—to hear a man recollecting this and asking ‘where have my glory days gone’—speaking of such things sounds charming, in the end. Truly charming. The poem of the Right finds fault with ‘What has happened, that /My brothers, one and all’ and the poet says ‘How I envy / The cries of autumn geese’. The line of geese in the autumn appears unmistakably to refer to the ordering of brothers—perhaps that order has been disrupted? If so, this, too, is extremely charming. To the extent that these, too, express the writer’s troubles, for the moment, I make them a tie.