haru no no no wakana wa kimi ga tame ni koso ōku no toshi o tsumamu to wa omoe
In the springtime meadows Fresh herbs, for my Lord’s Sake, indeed, In many a year Will I pick, I feel!
12
The Right’s poem was inferior, but tied as it contained an element of Felicitation.
[i] This poem is included in Shoku gosenshū (I: 34), attributed to Kanemori, with the headnote ‘A poem from the Poetry Match held by the Reikeiden Junior Consort’.
nami yosuru ama no tomaya no hima o arami moru nite zo shiru yowa no shigure wa
Waves break near A sedge-thatched hut’s Crude gaps The leaks reveal A midnight shower…
Lord Tadafusa 19
Right (M – Win)
ゆふ月よいるさの山の高根よりはるかにめぐる初しぐれかな
yūzukuyo irusa no yama no takane yori haruka ni meguru hatsushigure kana
On a moonlit night From Irusa Mountain’s High peak In the distance circles A first shower!
Lord Kanemasa 20
Toshiyori states: in the first poem, the shower sounds chilly! A shower is not something that one hears after getting up at dawn, yet this poem says that one first gets to know about it from the leaks, it seems that the poet has gone to bed, been leaked on, had his garments soaked and then got up and made a fuss. If he has not been leaked upon is this something he heard from someone else the following day? It really is very unclear. There’s a poem ‘Together with me / On my mountain pilgrimage’ which refers to showers falling on this mountain. The poem here refers to the same peak, so it sounds as if it’s referring to monks going around. Is that what it’s about? I am not just finding fault for the sake of it—these poems are unclear. As there’s only so much that can be understood from hearing them, they should tie.
Mototoshi states: one can compose about a shower falling anywhere and there’s no need to bring up a fisherman’s sedge-thatch hut, is there! Furthermore, one gets to know about a shower from the sound of it falling constantly on something like a roof of cedar boards, surely? Would one really be startled by rain of varying intensity falling soundlessly in spring? As for the poem of the Right, while it does not display a playfulness which would please the eye, ‘In the distance circles / A first shower’ is a bit better in the current context.
