Left (Win).
遠近の庵に引板打つ音聞けばかたみに守るや秋の小山田
| ochikochi no io ni hita utsu oto kikeba katami ni moru ya aki no oyamada |
Both near and far From huts the bird clappers sound; Hearing it, I wonder do they ward together The little mountain paddies at autumn time… |
389
Right.
風吹けば山田の庵に音信て稲葉ぞ人を守り明しける
| kaze fukeba yamada no io ni otozurete inaba zo hito wo moriakashikeru |
When the wind does blow To the mountain paddy huts Comes the sound Of rustling rice fronds; the folk within Warding, wakeful, ‘til daybreak. |
390
The Right find no fault with the Left’s poem this round. The Left wonder about the suitability of the phrase ‘folk within warding’ (hito wo moru), to which the Right respond that the expression carries the sense of wakefulness.
Shunzei’s judgement: the Left has the sound of bird clappers jointly guarding the fields, the Right, the sound of rice stirred by the autumn wind rousing folk in their huts – both poems display a particular skill in terms of form, but perhaps at the expense of feeling. Furthermore, I am unable to apprehend the Right’s ‘rice fronds; the folk within warding’. The Left wins, by a small margin.